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Any recommendations please.
Mrs M and I both celebrating retirement and being at the grand age of 60 and looking to spend all we've got (I suspect!)
An ice hotel or perhaps something slightly off the main tourist treadmill if that exists.
Cheers all.
TBH, it's massively variable, mate of mine came over a couple of weeks ago to see the lights, just got to see the bottom of a load of clouds.
This week i can see them by walking out into the garden and switching the lights off.
I'd go on a holiday to do something else, and hope you see the lights.
Save your money and head to the Costa...Costa del Whitley Bay! Mum and sister went to Iceland and said the one night they had the aurora it was epic. So much less light pollution. One of the rugby dads used to regularly go fishing in Norway and always said the aurora there were amazing too. (Full disclosure: not my photo unfortunately 😂)
Go for an awesome holiday & if you see the aurora then bonus.
We've seen them much brighter from central Scotland than when we went on a trip to see them in Iceland. The lights are not always visible (regardless of cloud cover). It's not a science & can't be accurately predicted in advance.
We did a stargazing session at the Twice Brewed Inn - combining my interests with my daughters, and the guy who runs them also does Aurora trips himself, as well as saying he would offer advice on when to go if anyone was looking to book independently.
Can't find his trip website but this is photography site
https://wilphotography.zenfolio.com/
Go for an awesome holiday & if you see the aurora then bonus.
This.
They were out last night in the Highlands.
Last night they were extremely high again, covered a lot of the UK. I was in the pub though so didn’t get to see them.
Seen a couple of times in Iceland and Norway. Norway was better. Flew up to Tromso and stayed for a long weekend at that Scandic hotel on the water front.
Best to hire a car or go on a organised trip to get you away from the city for the best view.
We went in Jan with temperatures below -25 so wrap up warm!
We went to a place called nellim, and had an amazing holiday doing all the scandi stuff like dog sledding, xc skiing etc.
Plus we got to see the northern lights.
As above go for the holiday and if you see them then amazing.
We are doing similar with a boarding holiday to ruka shortly, where hopefully we get to see the lights again
What mert said. My mum went to Iceland (the country) and only got to see them really really weakly once in the three days that she was there. We saw them from our kitchen really brightly (Uppsala). Clouds are a problem. Clouds are always a problem.
A bunch of us from uni had a holiday in a log cabin over millennium New Year, the cabin was way up inside the Arctic Circle. We flew to Helsinki, train to Rovaniemi then a coach transfer to the middle of bloody nowhere.
Did a bit of XC skiing, the local reindeer farmer came down and took us snowmobiling, we visited the reindeer farm and otherwise sat around doing a lot of drinking, snowball fights, igloo building and sauna-ing.
But one night was the most amazing aurora - that far north it lights up half the sky. We just lay on our backs in the snowfield looking up at it. Absolutely dead silent, zero light pollution and nature's disco right above us. It was ****ing freezing though, it got down to -30 that night. -15 is fine, -30 is "holy shit it's cold!" weather, even in dry cold.
As above - I wouldn't go on an aurora viewing holiday, I'd go for a week of hiking / XC skiing etc and hope to see it while you're out there.
To digress, if you want mind blowing astral phenomena I'd go south to see the Milky Way. Hire a car in Gaborone, drive to Chobe, negotiate a safari trip locally. You get an ecstatic sky every night, see loads of animals, it's a good deal warmer and probably costs about the same as freezing your nuts off in cloudy Scandinavia.
We went to Finland and saw them in February. Just luck really, but some very basic planning could improve that luck:
Further north the better. But as others said, choose your location around other things you want to do so aurora is a happy bonus.
Plan your dates around the moon phases - full moon = hard to see fainter auroras.
Darker the better. If you can stay somewhere on the edge of town or out in the sticks, then you just need a 5 minute walk into the darkness rather than a tour, taxi or hire car.
Loads of webcams on YouTube. Watching them, it looked like coast and mountains suffered more cloudy or foggy weather than smaller hills or flatter inland areas.
Snowing = clouds. Look at the monthly weather patterns for the area. In the far north, early season might be slightly less cold and more snowfall than when it gets properly cold and dry in late winter.
Download some of the apps and watch which places have the more consistent results. This was the most useful one for Finland, especially the bar chart summary plots. https://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/auroras-and-space-weather
Further north you go the better, the colours are more intense and you see waves moving across the sky rather than a faint green glow on the northern horizon. Some of the best I saw was on a night flight into Lulea in Sweden in December. Many of the vivid photos you see from the UK involve long exposures and lots of digital manipulation. There was a strong aurora here last night, but blown-out by the strong full moon
Artisan travel.
But I'd plan for it not being the main reason for your holiday as it's not guaranteed. Some great winter trips on offer. We did a 5 day husky trip which was amazing. Did see the northern lights on two evenings. But then it clouded over for the rest of the week.
Thx all.
Great advice about the moon. It was so bright here in Lancashire the other night when the alerts happened.
I was lucky to work in Oz many years ago and spent most weekends camping out in northern Victoria. Amazing skies.
My very first work deployment was to Raahe but that was June to August. Equally amazing, seeing the sun just hover below the horizon was mind blowing and always wanted to go back in winter
@MadBillMcMad - This might help you: https://aurorasaurus.org/
Also, the various colour indicate (apparently) the way in which the solar particles are interacting with different components int he earth's atmosphere. I did have a really good explanation page bookmarked, but cannot find it anywhere. This is ok: https://sciencenotes.org/aurora-colors-explained-southern-and-northern-lights/
I'm another who went to Iceland in January and didn't see a thing!
My friend is in the Yukon and sent me a stunning photo of the Northern Lights at the weekend. The git.
Good tips from mick_r , I'll add one - try to schedule night flight to your travels, getting over clouds increases the chances to see them.
Anyway, aurora happen when the Sun farts.
I've been to Nordkapp. Snow on the ground and the occasional flurry from the sky. Cold. I was disappointed that the aurora didn't show when there was a break in the clouds. Stayed up late as well but still no luck. June isn't the time to see the northern lights 🙁
The scenery was really good though and more than made up for the lack of visible aurora. Ended up travelling back down the coastline of Norway on the ferry seeing as much as possible with all the daylight.
Iceland is a fabulous and amazing country, but for auroras:
- Isn't as far north as Lapland etc. And if you compare the places on that Finland space weather site, a small increase north makes a big difference in amount of daily activity and intensity.
- Is an exposed island in the Atlantic with a mountainous central area - so it gets an awful lot of "weather". This does mean it can clear as quickly as it clags up. But there is fairly regular clag......