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Where in Northern Lights

Contrary to intuition, seeing the Northern Lights isn't just a matter of heading "north." The Lights usually circle the globe in a circular or elliptical band centered on the earth's North Magnetic Pole, which is not at the same location as the North Geographic Pole, but rather is offset in the direction of northern Canada. Furthermore, auroral displays aren't strongest at the North Magnetic Pole; the band of greatest auroral activity is usually offset from the Magnetic Pole by 20 degrees or so. This quirk is actually fairly convenient for would-be aurora watchers. It means that locations in the north-central United States, for example Minnesota and North Dakota, and also southern Canada see Northern Lights much more frequently than they would if the Lights were centered on the North Geographic Pole. Alaska and Lapland (the northern part of Finland, Norway and Sweden) also fall in the region of greatest probability, while the far-north territory of Siberia that misses out on some of the Lights (because the Magnetic Pole is displaced away from that region) tends to be more inaccessible to the traveler. A curiosity is that the exact location of the North Magnetic Pole varies from year to year, sometimes by tens of miles. The Pole has been moving north for a few years now as of 2006; it's now near Ellesmere Island in the nearly uninhabited far north of Canada. As a consequence, the advantages of being on the "right side" of the earth are not as pronounced as they were some years ago. Still, there's a slight North American bias even today in your chance of seeing the Lights. This said, the actual latitudes of the Lights vary considerably. In times of high solar activity (more on that later), the Lights may be seen in North America at latitudes as low as 35 degrees north, meaning that all but the southernmost parts of the United States may get a display. The offset of the Pole keeps solar storms from benefiting Europe quite as strongly, but most of the countries of northern Europe will get displays during periods of solar storms.

The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Northern Lights

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WHERE TO TRAVEL NEXT IN 2020

Northern Lights Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.

Where in Northern Lights