Air Travel. Business Travel. Packing Tips. The Future of Travel. Travel Etiquette. Travel Tips. Trending News. Sign up for our newsletter. Subscribe to magazine. Give a gift. Customer Service. Fairbanks, Alaska, is considered one of the best places in the world to see the Northern Lights. Article continues below advertisement. The Northern Lights are visible on about nights a year in Finnish Lapland.
For the classic experience, look to winter. As mentioned previously, the longer nights maximise the chance of the aurora making an appearance, while inky-dark skies make the perfect backdrop to their elusive dance. You might also want to consider later in the season, when the snow has settled and the sky is at clearest. For more information, visit our guide on Northern Lights holidays or find out what the best places are to see them.
Browse our classic Northern Lights holidays. The Northern Lights near Alta, Norway. That's not for lack of trying, as he once went on an aurora-focused trip to Yukon territory in Canada. But for those who are lucky enough to catch a strong display, the shimmering lights can appear like curtains, like pulses of jets or like other light-show phenomena — all available above your head, for free.
For best results, you can blaze your own trail somewhere along the "auroral zone" that encircles Earth's northern reaches. But you need to know when and where to go.
For example, the summer may be a good time for a vacation, but a better time to see auroras is actually between winter and spring. Read on to find out when and where to see the northern lights, and what powers this dazzling display.
If you're planning an aurora-viewing trip, try not to schedule it in the middle of summer. You need darkness to see the northern lights, and places in the auroral zone have precious little of it during the summer months.
Waiting might be a good time anyway, as summer is still a difficult time for international travel due to the COVID pandemic. International overseas destinations might be closed due to local quarantine protocols, sometimes suddenly, so check guidance carefully before you go.
Another factor you may want to check is how active the sun is during a particular year. The sun goes through an year cycle of activity and much of has been quiet as we're just at the low end of the cycle. Solar forecasters are seeing upticks in active regions as well as in the coronal mass ejections of charged particles that are key to lighting up the northern lights.
You also want clear, dark skies, emphasizes Charles Deehr, a professor emeritus and aurora forecaster at the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute, whose guide to aurora viewing has lots of great information. Winter and springtime are generally less cloudy than autumn in and around the northern auroral zone, so a trip between December and April makes sense. Ideally, time your trip to coincide with the new moon , and make sure to get away from city lights when it's time to look up, he added.
The aurora is a sporadic phenomenon, occurring randomly for short periods or perhaps not at all. You can get an idea of how active the northern lights are likely to be in your area by keeping tabs on a short-term aurora forecast, such as the one provided by the Geophysical Institute.
Also, a citizen science website called Aurorasaurus gives on-the-ground instant information from aurora enthusiasts wanting to alert the community to new sky shows. And you can have an aurora experience without even leaving your house if you so choose.
The Canadian Space Agency offers a live feed of the skies above Yellowknife, in Canada's Northwest Territories, during the fall, winter and spring when the sun goes below the horizon. So where should you go?
If you live in Europe, the easiest thing to do is head to the far northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland. Many local people speak English in those regions and there are lots of tours available, assuming that quarantine protocols at the time of your trip permit these activities. Visit Tromso's northern lights info.
0コメント