Northern Scandinavia and Iceland offer the most accessible destinations from the UK for viewing the northern lights, but there are recognised locations throughout the zone that offer optimum conditions for sightings.
The oval is tracked by space weather stations and is shown in forecast modules (see the ovation map below). Therefore strong aurora in Sweden do not necessarily mean strong aurora in Canada and vice versa. However, aurora activity is not consistent and the auroral oval – the appearance of light as a ring around the poles – constantly shifts. Particularly strong solar storms can result in the lights being seen in Scotland and northern England, though most aurora activity occurs within the oval hence its designation. The map graphic shown here is indicative of where the aurora are most visible, but they can appear at lower latitudes. It encompasses latitudes between 60 and 75 degrees and takes in Iceland, northern parts of Sweden, Finland, Norway, Russia, Canada and Alaska as well as southern Greenland. The northern lights most commonly occur within the geographic area beneath the auroral oval. During optimum configuration, which occurs during the equinoxes, “magnetic cracks” open up that let solar particles in setting off an auroral storm cycle, which in turn creates a higher probability of northern lights. Why is aurora activity stronger around the equinoxes?ĭue to the axial tilt, as the earth moves around the sun the angle of our magnetic fields relative to the magnetic field of the solar wind change.
Northern lights in usa plus#
Spring and autumn generally provide more stable weather conditions and milder temperatures plus there is greater aurora activity around the equinoxes.While they occur year round they are weaker than sunlight and therefore sightings aren’t possible from May to July and for most of August. The aurora borealis are potentially visible under dark skies from late August to mid-April preferably under a clear, cloudless sky.
Interestingly, the northern and southern lights, or aurora australis, occur simultaneously but the inverse seasons mean they generally aren’t visible at the same time. They usually occur between 60 and 75 degrees of latitude, which covers northern parts of Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Alaska and Russia as well as all of Iceland. These magnetic fields create auroral ovals around the top and bottom of our planet which move and distort as the earth rotates and solar flare activity increases. This occurs around the Polar Regions where those magnetic fields converge. The northern lights and their counterpart in the southern hemisphere appear when highly charged solar wind particles flowing from the sun collide with air molecules in the earth’s atmosphere transferring their energy into light. It’s said the term was first coined by Galileo in 1623 and is derived from ‘Aurora’, the goddess of the dawn and ‘Boreas’, the northern wind personified. The northern lights are also known as the aurora borealis, meaning light of dawn.
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