Northern lights

[Bananaandmarmite]

So, we have two big birthdays next year in our household and fancy going to see the Northern Lights.

Has anyone been? I’ve no idea where to start in terms of looking….

Where do we stay? How do we see them? Is there package deals? Is it better to do a cruise there or do a fly and hotel stay?

so many questions!

We’ve been to northern Finland twice, 4 nights December and 7 nights late January. Both times northern lights were just one night each trip at around 3am so missed them (hotel will wake you if you choose). It wasn’t the purpose of either of our trips. You’d think I’d missed my children’s wedding the way people reacted when I got home.
It is such a stunning country, even if you don’t get lucky with the lights you will be blown away by the beauty of the country.

You might see pics online/in shops which look absolutely bright and colourful- but these 'might' have been photoshopped though to add colour!

@SM4713 - it’s not photoshop, it’s that a long exposure camera can capture incredible colours that the naked eye can’t.

OP, the colours are much lighter and more muted than in photographs, but the displays can still be remarkable. My crap phone camera was pretty much what I saw by eye -

Hurtigruten do guaranteed Northern Lights - they offer a free repeat trip if you miss them. And various trips ashore during the journey - I couldn't do the snow mobile one as I couldn't insure for that because it counts as sports and I was too old. But North Cape was good, and an interesting run to the Russian border.
One night we saw a fantastic display from the ship, a friend in Alaska saw the same one, and an Aurora flight from England also saw it. And a woman in the breakfast queue was very disappointed cos it didn't look like photographs or videos.

@SM4713

*Some things I wasn't aware of though.

-You might see pics online/in shops which look absolutely bright and colourful- but these 'might' have been photoshopped though to add colour!

• To the naked eye, we saw some vague, green swirls and were disappointed. On the camera though, the pics were far brighter and defined.
• Take a camera stand/tripod to get non- blurry night images*

You definitely do sometimes see displays with the naked eye that live up to popular expectations (all the reds, greens, purples, and the shifting shapes, etc)..but that only happens if the display caused by a particularly energic batch of charged particles, so it's not that common.

More frequently you either get aurora that as so dim the light only triggers the black/white receptors in the eye (the rods) .... which is why at the early stages of a display you often just see a white glow (hence the Aurora's name)....if/once it gets bright enough then the colour receptors in the eyes (the cones) get triggered, and then the colours you actually get are down to incoming particle energy.

https://www.space.com/aurora-colors-explained

Went to Iceland
Booked an evening bus tour into the middle of nowhere to view the Northern lights
Waited a few hours
Initially, it looked like wisps of smoke
Then full dancing lights
It was worth the wait !

This year/next year is a good time to go as we are approaching solar maximum. I’ve seen them a good few times this year at home in Edinburgh.

However as PPs have said there’s really no guarantee so I’d plan to go somewhere that you’ll have a great time and have plenty to do in the day and then if there is a good level of activity and clear skies then the Aurora should be a bonus. I wouldn’t plan a whole trip around it to be honest. Iceland would tick the box for me - plenty of gorgeous places to visit, hot springs, waterfalls, national parks and then the lights would just be an extra to an already amazing trip.

There is a huge element of luck with the northern lights. I've taken 3 trips inside the artic circle, first time to Tysfjord in Norway to see the orcas and on that occasions saw Northern lights. A few years later went to Kiruna in Sweden with the husband, fab trip including ice hotel but no northern lights. Went to Churchill in Canada on honeymoon, actually South of the artic circle, but still in the aurora zone. No northern lights but fab polar bears. Most recently took the kids to Lapland, another fab trip but no northern lights. That said on that trip we were in cabins, families all quite spread out, and if they had appeared whilst we were asleep we wouldn't necessarily have known. Go for it, but plan to do lots of other fun stuff like snowmobile safaris so the trip is still a success even if they don't appear.

I’ve seen them several times within the arctic circle. My advice is to go as far north as you can, download one of the apps that give you the Kp reading, also have your camera set up correctly to photograph them ( or download one of the relevant apps) but most of all go outside as much as possible throughout the night on clear nights and keep looking. If you see a white cloud or arc this is usually how they start so hang around for a while.

It's very much a case of trying to stack the odds in your favour...going well north helps - strictly speaking you trying to get under a region known as the Auroral oval, and it's perhaps worth knowing that is to some extent centred on the magnetic north pole, not the true north pole, plus dark skies, plus somewhere with a good chance of clear skies..

Way back I was involved with a group that compiled auroral observations from the Europe and US and at that time the observer in the team who regularly logged the most nights per year with aurora observed was based near Glen Ullin in North Dakota US, at about 47 degrees north..so similar latitude to Paris, certainly not Arctic.

What swung it for him was a good dark skie site but more importantly proximity to the magnetic north pole/the auroral Oval, plus the local climate gave a very high percentage of clear skies in the average year.

https://britastro.org/2017/aurora-a-beginners-guide

This year you have the best chance to see them in 14 years so now is the time to go!
I'm just back from a trip to Finland and we managed to catch them (albeit for just 5 mins).
The Aurora tracking app is essential and you get pinged as soon as it detects activity so you can rush outside.
Unexpectedly, you can see the aurora better through a lens/your phone camera than you can your eyes!
We stayed here which is the most magical, serene place ever!
https://www.scottdunn.com/finland/hotels/aurora-village

Sailed from Greenland in September. Several nights we were woken up to say the lights were dancing for us. A lot of boffins had massive cameras and had spent hours selecting the right settings. I rocked up with my iPhone on auto and my pictures were far better!

I went on a family holiday to Lapland February half term this year. It was with Transun staying near Finland/Norway/Sweden border. We had excellent sightings fairly early in the night on 2/4 nights. One of those was on a night time snowmobile trip which was utterly magical. We didn’t do any specific aurora chasing but did the usual Lapland activities and got some good photos even with no camera skills and just using phones.

I've been on a couple of aurora searching tours, they either involve sitting around somewhere for hours and hours in the freezing cold or driving around for hours and hours, neither were in any way enjoyable. Both times cost a bomb and there was nothing more than grey lines to see with the naked eye, you could only see the green on the photos. If it's cloudy you won't see anything at all.

Much better I found was to stay just outside town and walk to an area with not much light and use a phone camera to take pics yourself. You can come and go as you please and it's free.

Don't stay in the ice hotels either, just go and visit in the day for about 100 times less cost. The people staying in them get kicked out during the day and you can walk around and see all the rooms. A lot of people who stay the night end up not sleeping in them all night and get up and go to the heated rooms I heard in Kiruna. The igloos are also often underwhelming and hideously expensive- loads of them all in rows, from what I've seen of them I'd give them a miss too.

If you go to Rovaneimi do not stay at the Santa Claus village or do any of their tours. You will be doing everything with a hundred other people and it will be far from magical. You'll be on a snowmobile in a queue of 50 people stopping and starting and crawling along at a few miles an hour. It's a fun place to visit and easily done by bus from town but it doesn't need more than a half day.

I've stayed in Kiruna - odd little town, Tromso - didn't like it much at all and Rovaneimi - far better with by far the best restaurants and not all horrifically priced unlike Tromso.

My advice is that you can do a trip fairly reasonably priced if you do it all yourself, don't spend thousands and thousands on it. Book flights with Easyjet or Ryan air, book somewhere on Booking or Airbnb and go on tripadvisor and find small set ups that offer small group tours to do dog sledding and snowmobiling. Get a bus to Santa Claus Village if in Rovaneimi, get a bus or group tour to visit an ice hotel.