This online community is one component of the Southern Australasia Aurora Alert Network, specifically for those in Australasia who have access to e-mail facilities. The wider network was initiated in 1997 and has auroral records spanning decades. It complements an associated and larger Telephone alert network which also includes participants without access to email facilities. Instructions about the additional telephone network are included in the Files FAQ section.

This forum enables the sharing of filtered alert notices by email, provides observational and other advice, records observation reports and forwards them to appropriate national and international organisations, and provides a means of sharing and similarly forwarding photographs of the Aurora Australis from the southern regions of Australasia.

Attached files to posted messages are not permitted directly (as an anti-virus measure), and must be placed into the Files or Photos folders instead. You will have access to post messages and files, and can see other background information and photos provided that you set yourself up with a free Yahoo ID on your profile first.

Please endeavour to name any added Photos as "YYYYMMDD-State-Town-letter", where YYYYMMDD is the UTC date of the photo, State=(VIC,TAS,SA,WA,ACT,NSW,NZ), Town is the town where the photo was taken, and suffixed on the end is a sequential letter=(a,b,c,d etc.) to distinguish multiple photos from the same place and date. For example,
"20031017-TAS-Hobart-a" is the first photo loaded for Hobart for the night of 17th October 2003 or the morning of 18th October 2003.
"20030509-VIC-Mildura-f" is the 6th photo loaded from Mildura for the night of 9th May 2003, or the morning of 10th May 2003.