The North-West Tasmanian, a plumber by trade, was hiking on Mount Farrell - a mountain he had long thought would be make a good foreground for an aurora photograph - late on Sunday afternoon.

"We were up at Tullah because I won a competition to stay at the Lakeside Lodge," he said on Tuesday.

"We went for a hike up Mount Farrell and I saw the aurora gauges had a bit of a spike so I headed down to Lake Mackintosh."

He said patience was required until shortly after midnight, when the beams signifying the start of an aurora australis performance started to appear.

And he got what he was looking for.

Mr Moyle said he had not been photographing the aurora much in recent years, as he had been planning shots that had not come to fruition.

A shot of Mount Farrell and Lake Mackintosh was one such foreground he had long had in mind.

What you see in his photo is not quite how it would have appeared to the naked eye - the colours were enhanced by a long exposure.

"With the naked eye you could just see the beams flowing, the camera brings out all the colour."

He said an image of the aurora he captured a few years ago, however, was more akin to what was visible on that occasion with the naked eye.

IN OTHER NEWS:

Two measures - one of geomagnetic activity and one of the solar wind density - combine to make for colourful auroras.

"When the KP is stronger and the density is high it brings all the colour in," Mr Moyle said.

"But honestly the gauges, the science of it, goes a bit over my head."

More of Mr Moyle's work can be viewed on social media.