the.com/southern lights

means The aurora australis — bands of colored light shimmering in the night sky near the South Pole, caused by charged particles from the sun colliding with Earth's upper atmosphere.

from 'Aurora' comes from the Roman goddess of dawn, borrowed into science in the 1600s–1700s for these glowing skies; 'australis' is Latin for 'southern,' the same root that named Australia. 'Southern lights' is simply the plain-English mirror of 'aurora borealis' (borealis from Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind) — a straightforward, descriptive counterpart coined once sailors and scientists in the southern hemisphere confirmed the same phenomenon lit their skies too, just with far fewer witnesses to talk about it.