The best place to see the northern lights is any destination in the “auroral zone,” the area within an approximately 1,550-mile (2,500 kilometers) radius of the North Pole, according to the Tromsø Geophysical Observatory (opens in new tab) in Norway.
How can I see the aurora?
Head north. The best way to see the northern lights is to head north. Most of the molecular activity that causes the northern lights happens near the Earth’s magnetic poles. For that reason, the Arctic region is an ideal location for hunting the aurora.
Can you see aurora with eyes?
Yes. Most commonly the aurora seen will be green or whitish, but depending on the strength of the activity, pinks and reds are also visible to the naked eye. The sensitivity of a person’s eyes will also be a factor.
Can we see the aurora from Earth?
The aurora borealis can be seen in the northern hemisphere, while the aurora australis is found in the southern hemisphere. While the best places to see the aurora are concentrated around the polar regions, the aurora borealis can sometimes be seen in the UK.
Can auroras be seen anywhere?
So the best places to see auroras are near the magnetic poles. These include areas of northern Greenland, the Scandinavian coast, Siberia (brrr!), and Alaska in the north, and Antarctica in the south.
Is it easy to see Northern Lights?
The Northern Lights are unpredictable.
In order to see the Northern Lights, you need a dark, clear night. They are visible from late August to early April anytime during dark hours, which in places like Abisko or Tromsø can be nearly 24 hours a day in winter.
What caused aurora?
When the electrons reach Earth’s thin upper atmosphere, they collide with nitrogen and oxygen molecules, sending them into an excited state. The excited electrons eventually calm down and release light, which is what we see as the aurora.
Is an Aurora harmful to humans?
The Northern Lights occur so high up in the atmosphere that they don’t pose any threat to people watching them from the ground. The aurora itself is not harmful to humans but the electrically charged particles produced could have some potentially negative effects to infrastructure and technology.
How does aurora look like?
They can look like an orange or red glow on the horizon — like a sunrise or sunset. Sometimes they may be mistaken for fires in the distance, like the American Indians thought. They can look like curtains or ribbons and move and undulate during the night. Auroras can be green, red or blue.
What do Northern Lights look like to human eye?
Simply put, most auroras are green. That would be the shortest and scientifically correct answer, (there are other colours of the aurora but green is the most commonly observed and relevant colour to this question). However, it doesn’t always appear green to our eyes.
How many auroras are there?
Depending on how you count, there are as many as 27 Auroras in existence today. They are found on both coasts and from Minnesota to Texas, but tend to favor the North for reasons I discovered as I traveled.
Why can’t everyone see Northern Lights?
As for why the phenomenon isn’t seen everywhere on Earth equally, he explains that the aurora is greatly influenced by the Earth’s magnetic field, which directs solar wind to the magnetic poles, both north and south. The strength of the solar wind also determines how far away from the poles the aurora can be seen.
Can you see aurora from a plane?
Seeing the Northern Lights from a plane
Seeing the Northern Lights from thousands of feet in the air is a unique experience because the lights appear brighter from the sky than from the ground. It is also easier to see the subtle dancing movements that the lights make.
How long do Northern Lights last?
How long do the northern lights last? Anywhere from 10 minutes to all night long, depending on the magnitude of the incoming solar wind. “Coronal holes” consistently produce nice auroras but big solar flares and CMEs-coronal mass ejections are responsible for global-wide aurora displays…the BIG shows!
Do the Northern Lights happen every night?
Auroras happen in every month but because they’re impossible to see against the super-light late night summer skies far up north, our trips to see them tend to take place when the night skies are properly dark.
Do the Northern Lights make noise?
What is clear is that the aurora does, on rare occasions, make sounds audible to the human ear. The eerie reports of crackling, whizzing and buzzing noises accompanying the lights describe an objective audible experience – not something illusory or imagined.
Is 2022 a good year to see the Northern Lights?
“There will continue to be aurora viewing opportunities in 2022,” Steenburgh said. “The solar cycle is indeed ramping up and as solar activity increases, so do the chances for Earth-directed blobs of plasma, the coronal mass ejections, which drive the geomagnetic storms and aurora.”
Where is the best place in the world to see the Northern Lights?
1. Tromso, Norway. Based in the heart of the aurora zone in the Norwegian Arctic, the city is widely regarded as one of the world’s best places to see the Northern Lights.
Do all planets have auroras?
Auroras have been photographed on Jupiter, Saturn, and even on some planets’ moons. Our moon doesn’t have an aurora because it doesn’t have the requisite atmosphere. It is likely that the same phenomenon occurs on planets in other planetary systems.
What is a red aurora?
On occasion the aurora gets a deep red color. This comes from higher altitudes, around 120-180 miles (200-300 km). It is again the oxygen atom that is responsible for this color.
Why northern lights are green?
The most common colour seen in the Northern Lights is green. When the solar wind hits millions of oxygen atoms in the Earth’s atmosphere at the same time, it excites the oxygen atoms for a time and then they decay back to their original state, when they emit the green hue we can see from the ground.