Aurora, southern lights captured across the Illawarra

The keen photographer has been chasing a photo of an aurora for years, and finally on Monday night he got it.

"I've never taken aurora photographs before. But I have a kind of bucket list of things I'd eventually like to capture. Aurora is one of them," Mr Ford told the Illawarra Mercury.

His spectacular photo taken at midnight in Gerroa was years in the making.

"If you don't know anything, start doing some basic research. Then join a bunch of Facebook groups of like-minded people. The beauty of that is the super passionate people will know what's happening and possibly give you a heads up," he said.

On Monday night he was tagged in a post about the aurora being visible. Stepping outside he could only see a faint red glow with the naked eye, but with his camera's long exposure that's when the magic happened.

"I'm not new to photography, but I had no idea what settings to use in camera. I did some Googling between test shots and asked some questions from those with more experience," Mr Ford said.

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For the likeminded photographers out there he shared his manual mode camera settings: nine second shutter exposure, aperture F1.8 and ISO set at 2500.

His only regret was the "fishing boat driving around all night lit up like a cruise ship".

Shannon Lawrence's also a keen photographer who loves capturing nature's solar, galactic and earth related events, but he admits he's been "chasing the aurora since 2015".

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"Daily, I check the aurora weather gauges have done for the past seven years," he said.

From his vantage point in Jervis Bay on Monday night he was finally able to capture the phenomenon at around 9.30pm.

"The moon had just gone behind the clouds to allow the beautiful colours of the aurora to shine bright," he said.

Auroras are commonly called the northern lights or the southern lights; or more technically the aurora borealis (north) or aurora australis (south).

"Curtains of light, rays, arcs, pulsating, and dancing are all terms used to describe these red, green, or sometimes purple light shows," the Bureau of Meteorology said.

The phenomena arises from events on the sun millions of kilometres away.

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"Massive solar flares often blast streams of charged particles into the solar wind and outwards towards the Earth. These particles are directed by the magnetic field of the Earth where they collide with atoms in the atmosphere," the BoM said.

"It is these collisions which generate the beautiful lights which are observed as the aurora. The patterns and shapes of the aurora are determined by the changing flow of charged particles and the varying magnetic fields."

Auroras are most commonly visible at high north or south latitudes.

In Australia, auroras have been seen on rare occasions from as far north as southern Queensland. But they are much more likely to be seen from the south of the continent.