Where and When to See the Northern Lights: A Calm Beginner's Guide

Seeing the northern lights is on almost everyone's someday list. The good news is that it's less about luck than people think. Go to the right latitude, in the right season, on a clear night, and give it a few nights, and your chances are good.

Here's what's actually happening up there, and how to plan for it without stress.

What causes the aurora

The Sun constantly streams out charged particles, known as the solar wind. When a strong burst reaches Earth, our magnetic field funnels those particles towards the poles. There they collide with gases in the upper atmosphere, and the gases glow.

• Green, the most common colour, comes from oxygen, roughly 100 to 300 km up.
• Red, seen higher up and during strong displays, also comes from oxygen at higher altitudes.
• Blue and purple fringes come from nitrogen.

In the north it's the aurora borealis. Its southern twin is the aurora australis.

Where to go

The aurora appears most often in a ring around each magnetic pole called the auroral oval. Places under or near it get displays on most clear, dark nights during the season:

• Northern Norway: Tromsø and the Lofoten Islands
• Swedish Lapland: Abisko, known for unusually clear skies
• Finnish Lapland: Rovaniemi, Inari, and Saariselkä
• Iceland: often visible even just outside Reykjavík on good nights
• Canada: Yellowknife and Whitehorse
• Alaska: Fairbanks

For the southern lights, try Tasmania or the south of New Zealand's South Island, including Lake Tekapo and Stewart Island.

When to go

• Season: roughly September to March in the north. The aurora happens all year, but you need dark skies to see it, and far-northern summers barely get dark.
• Time of night: often strongest between about 10 pm and 2 am local time, though it can appear any time it's dark.
• The equinoxes (around late September and March) are often said to bring more geomagnetic activity.
• Avoid the full moon if you can. Bright moonlight washes out fainter displays.

The Sun also runs in a roughly 11-year cycle of activity. We've recently been around a solar maximum, so strong displays have been reaching further south than usual.

How to read the forecast

Aurora forecasts usually use the Kp index, a scale from 0 to 9 measuring geomagnetic activity:

• Kp 2–3: good chances under the auroral oval (Tromsø, Abisko, Fairbanks)
• Kp 5+: a geomagnetic storm, when lights can reach much further south

But the most important forecast is the cloud forecast. A Kp 6 storm behind solid cloud is invisible. Many aurora chasers watch the cloud map first and the Kp index second.

What it really looks like

An honest note: to the naked eye, a modest aurora often looks like a pale grey-green arc, a bit like a thin cloud. Phone cameras on long exposure pick up far more colour, so your photos may look more vivid than what you saw.

Strong displays are different. Then the sky moves, ripples, and curtains of green and pink dance overhead. When that happens, put the phone down for a minute and just watch.

Tips: dress far warmer than you think, give your eyes 15 minutes to adjust to the dark, and plan for at least three nights in the area.

An aurora you can build tonight

If the far north isn't on this year's calendar, there's a gentler version. In Paper Worlds, Aurora Isles in the Fairytale Land world is a scene of paper islands under a glowing sky. You place the pieces yourself, and finishing it earns a little glowing-mushroom sticker for Free Play.

For more night-sky reading, try our five easy constellations, all visible on the same clear nights you'd hunt for the aurora.