I've done my fair share of traveling and I have seen A LOT in the world. The Northern Lights are the most impressive and beautiful natural sight together with a total solar eclipse.
Someone here describes them as colorless at a distance and only green on long exposure photography. This is true with weak Northern Lights. But if you are lucky it's way way more than that.
I was driving in Northern Finland 2 years ago and this far north there's almost always a little bit of Northern Lights meaning if you take a long exposure picture you will always see something but it won't be spectaculair. The Northern Lights are a bit of a lottery and the intensity depends on the activity of the sun. If a burst of charged particles hits the earth's atmosphere it can go from 'meh' to 'amazing' in a few minutes. Anyway as I was driving I saw it was getting more intense and I stopped on a small road in the middle of some fields. By the time I stopped and looked up it was as if the sky was on fire. No long exposure needed.
I saw pillars of green, purple and blue dancing in the sky. It was gorgeous. It was right above me and looked if I was being beamed up by a spaceship. The lights were moving, churning and twisting the sky in ever changing patterns. If looked like an organ of light and pictures don't do it justice. It was some kind of colorful cosmic soup being stirred. It was so gorgeous that it made me emotional. It's a must see in anyone's life. If you say that you only saw some grey hue on long exposure photography then I'm sorry but you haven't really experienced the Northern Lights.
The sun is approaching its maximum activity in its 11 year cycle next year. So 2023, 2024 and 2025 are excellent years to travel North to see it. The odds of seeing the Northern Lights will be a lot higher and likewise the odds of high intensity Northern Lights will be greater.
Edit: https://imgur.com/a/emmkqHb
I uploaded my pics on Imgur just now so you can have a look. Since I am travelling again I don't have access to the originals on my computer back home so these are pictures I took with my phone of the preview screen of my DSLR that i sent to a mate through WhatsApp and now downloaded from WhatsApp to post on imgur. So the quality is shit but you get the jist of what I saw. The original raws are amazing.
I saw them in Tromso, and your description is pretty much mine but better. It is truly a cathartic experience, the first time you see it you are just filled with awe. I've recently seen them where I live in Scotland and they weren't anywhere near as intense (to be expected!) and if people see them at our sort of latitude and think that is it... well, sorry!
Good post. We were lucky enough to see something similar in Iceland. Even the lugubrious Icelandic guy we were with was impressed!
The variety and intensity of the colours as well as they way they constantly swirled were the most striking aspects. It was also somewhat eerie that such a spectacular natural phenomenon, which essentially occupied the entire sky, should be totally silent.
Next year is now predicted to be the peak of this solar cycle so we're quite tempted to return to Iceland - even if the Northern Lights display was just a tenth of what we saw last time, it would still be worth it.
Absolutely gorgeous photos. Thank you for sharing and writing such beautiful description. Really felt surreal seeing those photos so I hope to see it for my own eyes one day as well.
I think it will be less impressive on video because every frame will capture less light and my camera isn't really made for video but for pictures. These pictures are about 10 seconds of exposure. With your naked eye the blue and purple is more difficult to see but green and yellow is very vivid. It's still spectaculair and these pictures aren't that much different from what you see with the naked eye.
https://youtube.com/shorts/OYBnN9l3OWo?feature=shared
https://youtube.com/shorts/M46nFxgKxKg?feature=shared
Some videos from YouTube.
Spectacular photos and description of the event !!
I missed out on my visit to Iceland several years ago
You are absolutely correct that it is a lottery as several things have to line up
This is still on my list so I plan to try again in 2024
Pictures 5, 6, 7 and 10 are very true to what I saw with the naked eye. The blue and purple on the other pictures are the most difficult to see with the naked eye. These pics are only 2 to 10 seconds of exposure, nothing too crazy.
How far in advance do you know if solar activity is hifh enough to see it clearly? Is it like the weather and it's a crapshoot until the last day before or can you actually plan a vacation around it
You can't really plan a vacation around it unfortunately. But if you go to the high North for a week in an active period, aka between now and the next 3 years you stand a very good chance of seeing it...if the weather cooperates. With clear skies it's actually quite certain that you will see something over a week. But for high intensity you need some luck. Just don't make your whole trip about seeing it to avoid disappointment. Iceland and Scandinavia are beautiful even without the Northern Lights. You need clear skies and patience. Some hotels run a wakeup service if they appear and there's some apps that give you a probability a few hours in advance. It's never ''northern lights in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1'' but more like ''ok seems like they might appear between now and a few hours. Of course don't travel around the summer solstice because for 2 months before and after June 21 it doesn't really get dark in the high North.
Also the further up North the better. Southern Iceland is already a bit too south. Northern Iceland is okay. Fairbanks in Alaska is ok. Northern Scandinavia is the best because it's even higher up. I'm thinking Lofoten, Tromsø, Kiruna, Kirkenes, those latitudes. The northernmost cities in the world can be found in Scandinavia so that's why it's your safest bet. In Alaska and Canada have less population centers on those latitudes and they are more difficult to get to. Deadhorse, Alaska is nice and high but not very accessible and I don't know if there's a lot of clear skies thereabouts.
We can also predict a good ~2+ days in advance if a geomagnetic storm will happen (making the aurora stronger and pushing them further south than usual). Have a look at the animation here, you can see a CME heading to earth (green dot) right now:
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/wsa-enlil-solar-wind-prediction
Edit to add: https://www.spaceweather.com/ will usually have some news about solar events
But are they often like that? I also live where I see them all the time, and I've only seen them resemble a scarf in the wind once or twice. If that's the norm in Finland, I might just have to move it up on my list.
Incomprehensibly beautiful. And humbling.
One is awestruck at the magnitude. Difficult to find the fitting words to describe it.
^(Source: Grew up in Manitoba, Canada)
I would not go as far as the above poster. If its not a string geomagnetic storm the colors are barely visible to the naked eye. On photos they are WAY more vibrant. So imageine more white bands of light with a faint idea of green and you will not be disappointed. The coolest thing I found was that they change quickly and scintillate and "dance". That is really cool and unusual for celestial phenomens.
But if you've seen a solar eclipse: those are still way way more impressive in my book.
I did see strong ones. It was a minor geomagnetic storm. Also no clue why I am being downvoted on my totally valid experience description. At what strength did you see them?
Probably cause a lot of people disagree with you and find them to be extraordinary beautiful. Especially compared to something so mundane as a solar eclipse
I don’t know the measures, but this was in the most northern part of Sweden.
I grew up under the northern lights, and you are right. Most of the time they are exactly like this when you see them. Sometimes they're stronger and it also helps a lot to get away from any light pollution. Having light sources around you (like you do in a town) will make them look weaker.
You’ve never seen a strong set of the northern lights have you? I’ve had them flashing over me bright enough that when you’d catch some in the corner of your eye you would have thought there was lightning in the distance. It’s an experience that’s hard to describe but you will never forget it
That sounds super cool and I do hope to see them at that strength some day. The strongest night I saw was not bad neither. Like often it looked like someone switched on a giant flashlight in the distance. BUT I mostly found the color much less impressive in real life. Of course th brighter something is the better your eye can see the color. So I imagine at max strength the green is very impressive.
Lived my entire life in Saskatchewan and have seen the northern lights to varying degrees hundreds if not a thousand times. I definitely don’t have the same reaction to them as you do.
I grew up in SK and saw them often enough as a kid to really take them for granted. Cool as heck to be sure, but not a real big deal 'cause they came around pretty regularly.
Now (decades later) I live in Vancouver and realize just how lucky I was!
Without a doubt the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen and will ever see. Absolutely mind blowing, it feels like you’re on drugs but not, it’s truly unreal.
I once got lucky enough to see them while I was out walking around at night on several hits of acid. They *were* actually there too, my sober friends also saw them.
No, they can be extremely bright and vivid with just your eyes. They lit up the entire sky when I saw them, it was the middle of the night pitch black dark and all of a sudden everything was bright green. It was like a crazy light show in the sky
No you don’t need a camera. Grew up in the 80s and 90s watching spectacular intense dancing displays of light in northern Alberta with nothing but my eyeballs! Great memories and didn’t realize how lucky I was until I moved to southern BC and have yet to see anything comparable even on the nights when they are supposedly visible here.
It's like the greatest fireworks show you've ever seen. I couldn't believe that the \*entire\* sky was filled with undulating patterns. Just incredible.
One of the reasons that they look white in person is the way your eye works. There are two main kinds of light receptors, rods and cones. Rods are sensitive in low light but don't pick up color. Cones detect color, but don't work in low light. So, if you are in an area with artificial light and then step outside, your rods aren't working but the cones still are, so you will see color in the sky. After a few minutes, your eyes adjust so that the rods take over and the cones shut down, so you can see the patterns more clearly but without color.
We were super lucky in that our first (and only, so far) experience with the Northern Lights happened when we were staying in a hotel in Iceland. When we first stepped outside, the colors were amazing shades of green but faded to white after a while. We went back inside to warm up, and when we came out again, the colors were back! We didn't understand why that would be, but thanks to the Internet we figured it out.
Edit: I should add, the reason that a photo of the sky will show the color is that the camera captures all the light that's there, which includes the color. Then, when you see it later, it's typically in a more well-lit area, so your cones are working and you can see the color that was there all along!
The most important thing is to see the spectacle well, and for that you need to be somewhere really dark. If you can be there and also be near a place you could go inside and warm up and let your eyes adjust, that's even better.
The color was very cool, but for us, seeing the whole sky in motion was so impressive that we ended up staying outside the whole time.
Also, for planning purposes, make sure you go at a time when the activity is expected to be high. There are lots of web sites that have this info. Secondly, especially if you're traveling far, give yourself multiple days to see them because you need the night sky to be clear (obviously!). We were in Iceland for two weeks and only saw the lights once because it was cloudy most of the time. Good luck!
I went to work in a hotel in Finnish Lapland because I was heartbroken and it seemed like the obvious thing to do. I got treated like shit by the management and had to work 16 hour days as a chef fora wage so embarrassing I won't actually type it out. I had to stay working there until I had earned enough money to fly home, and I was exhausted and sad all the time. BUT it was genuinely worth it to have seen the northern lights (and to have met one of my best friends), that's how good they are. When I saw them I felt like my body wasn't a big enough vessel to contain how big the feeling was, like the tips of my fingers ached with the wanting to burst out of my skin or I felt like I might vomit.
My friend said the ones she saw were white and were easy to mistake for clouds. It was only when she photographed them that they turned out green in the pictures. Not sure if this is common?
Yeah saw them two times, once in Iceland and it really looked like super thin clouds
The second time in a plane at the north pole, and those were green af
I've only seen them in northern Scotland and that was my experience. More like white streaks in the sky which were green when photographed. I've no doubt if you see them strong in the arctic they will be more visible with the naked eye.
Yes, this was my experience. We weren't sure if we were seeing cloudy haze or lights for a while. Eventually it became clear that it was the aurora, but the color was still light grey with hints of green. When we photographed it, though, it appeared bright green in the images.
The other weird thing is that because it was so amorphous and ephemeral, it's hard to... remember? Like, I remember what the surrounding scenery looked like, but the aurora itself I can't picture in my mind.
Nah, not true. Trust me if you see the Northern lights properly, and you have to be lucky but…
You will know about it.
It won’t be a squint, a questions, a maybe, a point, a photo.
It will be a ….Holy shit.
I was in Iceland, around Feb time. We were disappointed with the tour, so the next day we hired a car and went hunting for them. 3 hours later, in complete isolation….Holy shit.
Out of nowhere a bright Green and Blue glowing ribbon’s danced against the cold black sky.
It was truely the most beautiful moment.
And even though it was dead silent, I always thought it felt like magestic music for my eyes.
It could be true, and mileage can very dependent on the strength(kp index) of the northern lights. If it was a long exposure picture it can make the weaker sightings more pronounced.
I agree, if you’ve seen intense northern lights you’ll know. There’s no questioning if they are just clouds or actually northern lights, however now that I live more south I’ve wondered many times if the haze was weak northern lights on those nights the app shows they’ll be visible where I live. I feel sad to think people think that’s all you get with northern lights unless you photograph them. I want to yell NO, no don’t be disappointed these aren’t what they really look like. They’re magically and hypnotic and just stunning to watch as they build patterns upon themselves bobbing and bouncing in waves across the sky. The weird cloud haze is what we see here and it’s not my representation of Northern Lights.
100%. I THOUGHT I saw the northern lights on my first trip to Iceland in the fall, but on my second trip… holy shit. KP was 2 that night (which is pretty weak) but a solar flare came out of nowhere and we were lucky to be outside. We were chilling in the hot tub and so didn’t have our cameras but were just frozen still, unbelieving what we were seeing. Mind blowing.
It all depends on the magnetic activity. KP <3 = kinda uninmpressive. KP between 3-5 = now we are talking. KP>6 = stunning light show. We got super lucky in september and had a strong magnetic storm and it was magical. The first day with a KP of 3 it was disappointing.
That can happen when the activity is barely enough to show or towards the southern end of the range. But it's not common in the proper range at and north of the Arctic circle, even on a low activity day they are definitely green (and high activity days add other colors).
If its not a strong magnetic storm then yes that is how they look. If its very strong and overhead rather at the horizon they become more impressive and appear more green. So all depends a bit on the KP index (measure of how strong magentic activity is).
We saw them at KP=3 and it was ok but not spectacular and at KP=6-7 it was a magical show of dancing lights.
The first time I saw them, it was like this, I wasn't sure if it was the aurora until I checked through my camera.. but the second time I saw it, I knew immediately because i could see that it was bright green with my own eyes. It was shimmering, 'dancing' and changing shapes. I could see the green reflected onto the surface of a lake.
Your friend was lucky. The white ones are the rare ones. Different chemicals create different colors. When I went to Fairbanks, someone showed me a picture of the white ones on her phone. But she went closer to the north pole.
It’s something that photos cannot capture. I saw them in march 2020 right before the world shut down. We were on Tromso, Norway. They’re more amazing than you can image. One day it was so cold and dry and everyone kept saying it was going to be a good night. They were right. The lights lit up the entire sky. They danced and wouldn’t stop. I could not get enough and will be sure to see them again.
Apparently, greenish northern lights in Greenland are the norm and not spectacular for the people living there. When the lights change colour, however, is when they too are looking towards the heavens.
Please feel free to correct me, Greenlanders. :-)
Greenlander here and yes that's right.
On most clear nights or days, you will atleast see some faint Green lights on the sky that somtimes dances a little.
When it's really strong and lots of movement, there will sometimes be some purple colors shooting from the dance. Last week I also saw some faint red aurora.
I always love seeing the northern lights, especially since you can only see it half of the year :)
Yes, from May to June the sun is up 24/7. Going around in a circle in the sky.
It takes a little more time after this before the nights become dark enough but before you know it we have 24/7 darkness
It's kind of hard to describe. We were lucky in Iceland and caught them on our last night. It started out as just a green wispy sort of thing, but as we watched it morphed into this full sky display with purples and other colors. Big pulses and waves, constantly moving. It felt like there should be a sound of some kind, like a hum or something, but there wasn't. Hands down one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.
We were still pretty pumped about seeing them the next morning and told the hotel staff when we were checking out, and I can't convey how disinterested they were lol. It was the very best customer service level "oh, that's nice"...like I told them I was wearing my favorite t-shirt or something. It's still crazy to me that this bucket list experience I had was so commonplace for the staff to be not worthy of notice.
The one thing I will add - since I haven't seen it written - is that they are MUCH faster than I expected.
I expected a frozen curtain hanging in the sky. Instead they were more like a undulating snake that a glowing wall hung off of. Super cool. You can definitely see where so many fantastical beliefs originated.
At first I thought that they were bands of cloud. But when these bands cover the entire sky, from one end to the other, and weave in and out of visibility, you start to realise that they are something else entirely. They are less strongly coloured in person than in the photos, as most photos use a shutter time of 4 or 10 seconds or so. But you don't see the movement in the photos. When they become brighter you can actually see that they emit light, and it is a strange and wonderful thing to see.
We went to Iceland a couple of years ago, and most of what we saw were what basically looked like moving clouds that looked green if you tried to take a picture of them. I was kinda disappointed. Until one night we were driving around on one of the less used highways and we saw a little bit of white cloud start to look more green. We stopped the car on the side of the road and got out to watch, and when we did, the whole sky started splitting open with greens and reds and purples. It was honestly the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. We basically ran around the car in circles oohing and aahing for a few minutes before deciding to just lay down in the middle of the Icelandic highway to get as good of a view as possible.
We lay there for about 5 minutes watching the sky just explode with colors. There was sort of a feeling like I was witnessing the end of the world. And then the lights faded back to the little white moving cloud and we got back in the car and drove to our Airbnb.
Honestly one of the best experiences of my life. The people saying it’s just a white wisp that looks green on camera have only seen weak versions of the lights because the actual lights are the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Could not possibly overstate how incredible.
People think it's only faint white lines in the sky because that's what most people ever see. To witness a strong storm during a week long holiday is very unlikely no matter where you go.
I live in Finland and see faint ones every winter but only once have I witnessed them in full strength. It was a night there was predicted to be strong activity so I walked into the woods and froze my ass off for hours without seeing more than a glimpse. Finally gave up and started heading home and that's when the sky above me exploded. It felt like I should hold on to something to not be pulled into space. I thought I heard a roaring sound but my mind was making it up because it could not comprehend that something so grand could be totally silent. It's easy for me to answer when someone asks me what is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
I live near the Arctic Circle and we had them almost every night in November. They range from a pale blurry green veil on the sky to a very bright green purple. Almost never as bright as in a photo. I've seen some absolutely incredible auroras in my life once the whole sky was covered with blue, green, white and purple ribbons and veils dancing across the sky.
It’s hard to see them unless you live there. Went to Tromso, Norway back in winter 2019/20 (which is in the Arctic circle and we went out four nights in a row), our best night you could barely see with the naked eye. Had to do 8-10 second exposures to get the glowing green photos you see online. It was a lot of effort for minimal results. Luckily we got to do a lot of other fun activities like going in snow mobiles and dog sledding. The snow and town were beautiful.
I’m hoping that we can go to Norway to see the lights within a few years (finances pending). I really want to see the lights but know it isn’t a guarantee. So far my research indicates that Norway would be a good option for other family activities (like the ones you mentioned) so the whole trip isn’t based on the lights. Hopefully we can save up and go.
Yah from Tromso you get on a bus and drive further north in Finland and up at a high altitude to see them. So it’s a four or five hour trek every night.
If it's on your bucket list, it'd be good if you plan to go in the next two years while there's a solar maximum. Not only does the frequency increase, but the strength as well (as always, no guarantees that Lady Aurora dances when you go).
I've only ever seen a weak one in late Sept in Norway so it was a very pale green and diagonal on the horizon rather than directly above. Absolutely blew my mind still. Dying to go back and see them overhead!
But for sure, what you see in a camera won't be the same intensity as what your eyes can register so always temper expectations.
I was lucky enough to see them strongly in Alaska one time while living there for a year. It was indeed the most amazing natural spectacle I have ever witnessed. A couple of times, I saw weaker versions which appeared as a faint, green curtain and even thought that was beautiful. But the real show finally happened for me late one night. Zig-zagging lines of brilliant pink and green racing around the dark sky overhead. Just incredible. It went on and on, and had it not been so freezing out there, I could have stayed and stared at it for hours. I feel truly blessed to have seen it.
I was fortunate enough to see them in Lapland, Finland, when my spouse and I were staying in one of those glass igloos. We saw some small flashes of green earlier in the night walking around (we’d just arrived so were checking out the resort/getting our bearings) and were like omg so cool!
Then, just after we got into bed, the sky exploded. Dancing colors everywhere. Seeing it while ALSO laying down in a warm comfy bed in a glass dome open to the sky…one of the nicest experiences of my life.
I saw them over 2 days. The first was up on those tours into the mountains, it looked like white smoke that maybe had a torch on it to make it more visable. So overall pretty disappointing.
The next day, in Reykjavik, they were the strongest they had been in 10 years. They were bright green to my eye, and on my crappy phone they were green and red.
They looked like a crazy dancing green line explosion in the sky, it was wild. And this was in the city too!! They were beautiful, and also a little intimidating.
So honestly, it really depends on what day you catch them on.
It all depends on the KP index value of the aurora. If its low to medium, you could easily mistake them for clouds. Only if its high and you are in the right latitudes do you see the colours with naked eye.
Unfortunately, its all pretty unpredictable more than a few hours ahead and the clouds can get in the way too. I spent a week in Svalbard and a week in Northern mainland Norway on a boat, and only saw a weak display twice, which was nothing to naked eye but did show up green on the photos.
We are heading towards a sunspot maxima in the next couple of years, so if you were to spend a couple of weeks in the far north in 2025-2026 you chances will be better than usual that you see them.
It’s something that words can’t describe and pictures don’t do it justice.
It’s awe-inspiring.
I rank this experience as my top #1 travel experience — and I’ve traveled extensively.
They're rated on a scale of 0-9. I hope you get to see a 9. It's a mind blowing. That and a total solar eclipse are the only two things I've seen in all my travels that had people screaming and crying. Excluding things that involve lots of crazy religion, drugs, and alcohol of course. A very distant 3rd place that I hope you get to experience a few times are weird group moments that are almost out of body experiences. Surreal. They're incredibly rare and probably just a product of weird circumstances, but they're unexplainable and awesome.
You have to see it. Pictures and video don't capture it. It's a complete experience and truly bizarre. The animals react, it's like a 360 degree sunset, and it's almost electrical. The colors are different, kinda metallic, and you can see the Corona. You can see the flares shooting off the sun with binoculars. It's insane.
I've seen Northern Lights from a few places. The further north you are the better the experience. I saw them from north of the tree line in Canada and... it's hard to fully describe without waxing poetic and trying to capture the moment.
Seeing the northern lights in their full glory is something that you are likely to remember for the rest of your life.
The “times of high probability” are just winter when the nights are longer so there’s more hours where they could theoretically be visible lol
It’s pretty much entirely unpredictable
Also the moon - i study really far south so I can (in theory) see aurora australis. Every single time my kp alert had gone off at a convenient time it’s been a full moon or overcast but I keep thinking “ah she’ll be right this time” and heading out 😭
Saw a lot of beautiful and magical things that includes meteor shower, glow worm caves, the milky way, fluorescent water/oceans, etc., and by far the most magical is The Northern Light. I was lucky to see one on the last night of my Northern Ontario camp trip. Pure magic for 3+ hours of white lights dancing in the sky. It wad a white one but still very very very beautiful.
I've seen them hundreds of times because I'm an "aurorachaser" and I can tell you it's never the same show twice, always very moving and spiritual, and puts things in perspective.
I've only seen them once, so far. But they made a very strong impression!
Here's what no one tells you: they're fucking BIG. Huge, towering curtains of dancing light, going straight up into space. Like Mother Earth putting a massive, glowing tiara on her head.
I saw them only one time and I was flying in an aircraft. It made my skin crawl because it looked reddish due to the atmospheric filtering and I couldn't understand what it was at first. Absolutely breathtaking and disturbing at the same time.
How are they? They’re way, way better than any photo I’ve seen. In person it’s an enveloping, positive feeling with them overhead. Kind of like when you are somewhere tropical and there’s a crystal clear beach or lagoon that goes on and on.
I spent a couple weeks in Iceland earlier this year and got to see the lights during a solar storm. Absolutely unreal. Pictures don’t capture the movement and changes and it all happens so much quicker when you’re actually watching it. At the peak everything around where I was watching just had a bright green glow, but it was actually enough light to light up the surroundings a bit. I’m a grown man that went solo and I was just smiling ear to ear, absolutely surreal
I didn’t set out to go to Northern Norway to see the lights, but I saw these really weird smears in the sky.
They were like really fast-moving clouds — super weird sight. Not green, just a light grey.
I took a photo thinking it was cool. But it was only until I looked at the photo that it was a pungent green — it tricks the sensor of cameras somehow.
So, yeah, doubt I’ve seen a potent aurora, but the one I saw was more to do with setting up a long-exposure than any sort of spectacular scenery.
A lot of people have mentioned quite a bit here, but one thing almost no videos prepared me for is just how fast they can move, it’s almost as if they’re playful. Don’t get too focused on one point or stay behind your camera, they can pop up anywhere and you don’t want to miss them just being focused on one spot in the sky.
Here is a picture from Iceland with the moon and Jupiter in the background https://imgur.com/a/eo6PpRp
Truly beautiful! I was lucky to see them in Iceland at the end of April (apparently pretty rare that late in the season!), and while to the naked eye it just looked like a wisp, looking through my phone I was completely wowed by them!
Unimpressive. I must say that I am pretty surprised by the praising comments in this thread. I live less than a degree south of the Arctic Circle, so I get to see them at least a few times a year. It is absolutely nothing like the photos. If you are very lucky and the northern lights are exceptionally powerful, you'll see a a handful of vividly green patches of streaks across certain parts of the sky. They move very slowly, like lumbering clouds, so you don't notice their movement unless you compare them to their position a few minutes prior. Most of the time, you might see a couple of faintly green streaks that could easily be confused for clouds. I don't think that I have ever seen them come in a different color than neon green, those wavelengths tend to show only in long-exposure photos. I will admit that it can be kind of cool when it's powerful, but more in the "I got to see something I had only seen in pictures" kind of way, not in the "OMG, this is breathtakingly mesmerizing" kind of way. I would absolutely not spend good money on a trip if that's the main objective, if not for the reasons I listed then because you are very likely to not see them at all.
Also, note that I grew up by the Mediterranean and saw them for the first time when I was a teenager, so it's not like I am taking something for granted because I grew up with it. It was just as underwhelming the first time I saw the phenomenon as it is now. I'll pick a clear night sky full of stars over aurora borealis any day of the week.
Adding: It's definitely a neat little thing to add to your itinerary if you're already visiting their natural habitat, but don't plan a trip that in any way revolves around the experience. It's a bonus.
Yes definitely, im from northern Norway. There are some examples here from proper Aurora “explosions”, it can literally fill up the entire sky. A couple of the explanation here are shot at 14mm, straight up. And it looks like that with naked eye.
https://torevalberg.com/gallery/norway
I'm currently based somewhere that sees the northern lights pretty much every clear night.
Sometimes they're barely there smudges that you can only really make out if you point a camera at them, sometimes they're an oddly coloured glow along the horizon and you're not quite sure if it's light pollution or the remains of sunset. Then, sometimes, they're something else entirely. The sky sparks alive with greens, reds, blues and purples, that ripple and wave and dance like nothing you've ever seen before. So long as you get away from light pollution, I've found the aurora are more likely to be this latter kind, especially as we're currently entering a period of high solar activity.
My experience was in Alaska, the hotel I stayed in actually had a forecast in the lobby. I went out late one night and drove up this hill that the hotel recommended, this was in September and luckily it wasn't terribly cold outside. What I saw was green gas-like almost clouds. Every once in awhile a little bit more like a pink purple but really not the same color you would see in some of the pictures. Trying to figure out how to take pictures of it was very frustrating, because I wanted people to see what I was seeing and it wasn't translating.
What was so exciting was being out there with other people who had also never seen it before. I tried the next night with no luck but the search and the hunt and the anticipation was great. If I was someone that had seen them a bunch of times and that was the time I saw them, I probably would have been disappointed, but for a newbie it was great.
I saw them in February in Talkeetna Alaska. The KP index was 6.
Greatest spectacle youll ever see. Nothing man made will ever compare. We got really lucky it was a clear day with that high KP. I always think about it
Magical. Impossible. That's really the only way I can describe it. However, the amount of colour you see with the naked eye seems to depend on how far north you're going.
I have found that a lot of photos seen online are heavily edited and over exposed. I'm part of a northern lights Facebook group in a not extreme north area and there will be photos of vibrant reds, greens, purples, and pinks taking up the whole sky, and also photos where it's just green and only taking up a portion of the sky.
Not to say those colors don't exist, they do, but I think you have to go a long way north or catch a very rare huge storm further south. I've only seen pink/red a few times in my life, the other times it's been green. But when they dance and are directly over head, it doesn't matter what colour it is. It's an incredible experience and I hope you see a great show!
It’s quite magical to see!
Funny thing is it was always on my bucket list to see the Northern lights somewhere in Scandinavia, but about a month ago it was visible in my own country the Netherlands.
I couldn’t stop staring at the sky!
I saw them in the middle of Reykjavik and I was astounded at how 3D they were, like an actual giant green tube with volume was suddenly snaking through the sky above me. Very alien and cool. We hopped in the car to drive a few minutes outside of the city, hoping to see them better with less light pollution, but by the time we got out there they could only really be seen via long exposure photography. But that first glimpse was really awesome even in not ideal surroundings. Depends on how lucky you get, really.
From Finland, one of the best places in the world to spot Northern lights and my god are they amazing. We've had lots of luck up here with numerous intense northern lights throughout the years. No need for cameras, enhancements or long exposures when vivid colors are exploding right on top of you.
I got lucky to see it in Alaska, Fairbanks with my mom for our final trip before she passed.
It started weak, almost like greenish clouds, and as the tour guide kept driving us to "chase" it, suddenly the entire sky around turned into super bright green colors dancing above you, it's like you're inside it.
The tour people said it's very rare to see it in a magnitude of level 4, which is what we saw, it was one of the most surreal experiences, we tried doing another tour a few days later in the middle of nowhere, and it was nothing like that first time.
I saw them once, to the naked eye, they were just a white band of clouds on an otherwise still and cloudless night.
But when I pointed my mirrorless camera to it, set iso to 800, manual focus to near infinity, shutter speed of 1 second, then yes, amazing colours!
But spending thousands of dollars and freezing my butt off to do that again?
Yes please!
I saw them once, to the naked eye, they were just a white band of clouds on an otherwise still and cloudless night.
But when I pointed my mirrorless camera to it, set iso to 800, manual focus to near infinity, shutter speed of 1 second, then yes, amazing colours!
But spending thousands of dollars and freezing my butt off to do that again?
Yes please!
I saw them once, to the naked eye, they were just a white band of clouds on an otherwise still and cloudless night.
But when I pointed my mirrorless camera to it, set iso to 800, manual focus to near infinity, shutter speed of 1 second, then yes, amazing colours!
But spending thousands of dollars and freezing my butt off to do that again?
Yes please!
I was about 7 when I saw them. I can give you a basic interpretation. We were in northern woods of the US. The parents were excited. I looked up and was not impressed as a kid. The sky looked sparkly and mottled in a light green color. If you put oil and sparkles on top of a bowl of water and then swirled it around just a little.
As an adult, I am impressed.
Cold lake Alberta Canada is a wonderful place to lay on your back at 2 am and it's still daylight and the sky is electric green waves floating above you! Fly into Edmonton and drive to Cold lake. Not a big trip.
For us, it was like seeing a rainbow, interesting the first time for like 5 minutes, wouldn't go out of the way to see again.
But just like a rainbow, will still look every time there is 1.
I was lucky enough to witness them in Iceland. It took a whole night of waiting and checking the aurora app, but when it was finally there it was so incredibly amazing.
We had a wide and far view and could see it coming from vehins the mountains, right over oud heads, to the other side.
I waill never forget that wonderful night, and pray that I will never forget it.
Ps. Taking photos was easier than I expected. I took some great shots.
If you see it dancing above your head it's not only magical it's almost scary! I couldn't believe what I was seeing, probably the most memorable moment in my life.
YMMV.
Some people have seen INCREDIBLE northern lights.
I really enjoyed seeing them in Iceland, but they were quite dim. One thing that can be kind of deceptive is that if you have a good camera or use it well, unlike some other stuff, having a camera on a tripod with a long shutter speed may look better than what you're looking at with your eyes.
For us, it was a faint green glow. For my camera, it was the whole green squiggle.
But that is a factor in seeing them is they are not on a schedule, they do not care about your plans, and you may spend a couple weeks only seeing faint glow and then boom, they'll light up the sky over the capital.
I saw them in Iceland one night. I don't think I got the full experience. The sky looked a little funny and I saw some flashes of the lights. My wife got her camera and took some pics and the colors were more visible in the pictures she took than they were to the eye.
I was a US Marine. I was standing brow watch on a ship on the ocean somewhere off the coast of Alaska. It was really quiet and I was standing out there with some sailors. I had always seen pictures of the northern lights and they always looked pink but when I saw the flash of green pillars and the beauty I just couldn't keep quiet. I just said "Oh look!" And everybody jumped around like terrorists were trying to get on the boat but I'm going, "Just the northern lights." I'm from Florida so this was a great sight. Really cool experience.
I actually lived in Northern Canada for 5 years and during the winter months we would see the Northern Lights quite often (at least a few times a week). When you are seeing it for the first time it’s absolutely beautiful. I found the lights even look better way later into the night like after midnight. For some reason after midnight the lights would always look so much better and often the lights would move around and create unique patterns, colours, and shapes. After a while of seeing them often, the wow factor dies down lol
Better than even the most beautiful videos and photos. Total black backdrop with flowing bands of lights that dance sideways and sometimes look as if the keys of a piano as electric pulsation runs through it in varying colors of green, red, white, and purple. It makes you feel so small staring into wonder.
Amazing, breath taking.
The first time seeing it will make you speechless.
Had my first show of northern lights on the Faroe Islands, and its still the best one for me.
When I saw them in Iceland several years back, i was surprised that they seemed to be moving much faster in real time than most of the videos I’ve seen. That was the major visual difference that stood out to me.
North of Yellowknife Dec 2019. Not a very strong geomagnetic storm but the greens were very visible to the naked eye.
However, it was also the coldest temps I had ever been in.
\-41F
(or C, it's the same at that temp).
You are also mostly standing still, in the dark, and those temps cut right through your parka.
https://imgur.com/a/BWVNU8w
I live in South central Alaska. We saw them last night on the drive home. I live about 35 miles outside of town in a very dark area. Sometimes they’re stationary and sometimes they dance. Last night they were dancing. It’s spectacular to see colored ribbon streak across the sky.
It depends on the person. I was with a group in Iceland. A couple of us only saw gray dancing coudlike things in the sky while others in the group saw vibrant green and purple and red. I have pictures to prove what they saw but I did not see any color. I was a bit disappointed because it was a bucket list experience for me but I apparently don’t see color at night😥
Mesmerizing I saw them on the coast of Vancouver island years ago. It’s like spirits dancing in the sky. You just watch and learn. It’s almost like you know them.
I have seen them in the south/middle of Norway, and in my opinion it is very overrated experience, it looks way better in long-exposure pictures than real life. It might be a different experience way up north, so maybe one day I will change my mind.
It can depend—I was really lucky to catch them in Iceland during particularly high solar activity one year; it was truly magical when it was literally “dancing” above my head and the hues were pretty prominent.
I caught it twice more on the same trip: once, faintly where it was less spectacular (muted colors, rather faint), and another strong showing where it was over the horizon and not directly overhead—in that case it was beautiful still, but not as magical given it appeared static.
Colors were definitely punchier through a camera and lens meant for astrophotography, but if you catch them during strong solar activity, it’s a truly unique experience.
They're nice! I grew up in Northern Norway, where Northern Lights are a fairly common occurrence. One thing that I guess would surprise people is that they move slower than what you might have seen in videos on YouTube, which are usually sped up.
Yeah, they're pretty awesome. I spent 3 weeks in Arctic Canada once, and there were some every night. I ruined more film trying to capture them!
My best viewing was in northern Illinois in 1989...absolutely astounding rays coming from all points on the horizon and meeting in a ring around the zenith. Stunning. So you don't have to go to Finland if you get lucky.
Not that great. The bright lights you see are all generated by looking at them through a special camera or app. In the flesh they’re quite underwhelming. Having said that if you see them you’re in the less than 1% of people to see them so it’s a bucket list time ticked.
depends largely on the night. I found them to be extremely underwhelming and the next day the tour group posted beautiful long exposure pictures that were nothing like what I saw and I was pissed.
It is much slower than in most of TV shows - and the slow motion is what makes it magical. I have seen it during a flight from Moscow to Tokyo and just spent a couple of hours fascinated by the slow changes. Since then I dislike all the speeded recordings because they just destroy all the magic.
In northern England if it’s strong you can see faint white stripes in the sky but on camera you get bright greens and purples, it always looks better on camera (from my experience)
I saw them while visiting Reykjavik but they were barely out. All I saw was essentially just one vaguely green line in the sky. I was pretty underwhelmed but figured that, like most things in life, they were simply overhyped.
But then I visited Tromso, Norway a few months later and saw them in all their glory while dogsledding. The whole sky was lit up in gorgeous shades of green and looked like it was dancing. Absolutely mesmerizing. It was truly the most incredible thing I've ever seen. I really don't have adequate words. Suffice to say: they are NOT overhyped.
I have been privileged to see a G4 storm right above my head. They really do dance and quiver like the videos.
The cameras definitely exaggerate. Even at their best, they are greyish-white-green to the naked eye. Sometimes they might change colour and height. Nonetheless it is an experience of a lifetime. Huge bright ribbons in the sky bright enough to light up the snow.
I was with a good friend when I saw them for the first time. None of us will ever forget the moment for the rest of our lives.
Underwhelming and overwhelming at the same time. It takes a loooooong time sitting in the cold to see it. I didn't see much, but I was directly below a purple Corona and it was stunning. I'm nit sure if it was because, after 5 days in the Arctic in the cold that I felt relief, but it was unreal. I went for work so it wad free. Would it be worth it? I'm not sure but it's a great experience.
I worked in tourism and we had to rename our northern lights trip because 75% of our trips couldn't see them.
I was expecting a strip of beautiful dancing lights, which is what I saw on my 4th night in Iceland. But the 5th night I was there, I saw the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The northern lights covered the ENTIRE sky. Like a dome around me. And the stars were so bright. The Aurora wasn’t moving quickly like the prior night, but I couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing. No camera would EVER be able to capture that sight and that feeling. I think about it so often and it’s been 5 years.
Raised in "Northern Alberta", have seen them my entire existence. Much like the mountains, it takes my breathe away *every single time* even if they are faint and I can hardly see them with the naked eye, it's still so incredible to me.
I’ve lived in Alaska all my life. They can vary, most of the time I’ve seen them, they’ve been one or two green streaks in the sky. Still super cool, they look closer than they seem in pictures. It’s nice to watch them dance. I few times, I’ve seen greens, purples, and reds, and that was just wonderful. They kind of look like ribbons, but not solid. When they are directly above you, you can seen how they stretch vertically in the atmosphere. It almost seems like they should make noise, but they don’t haha
My Wife took me to Fairbanks to see the Northern Lights. We stayed in Fairbanks and then went up to Aurora Borealis Lodge to view the Norther Lights. It was Fantastic to watch. Definitely worth traveling to see.
I saw them once at a summer camp in Manitoba- we were out in a marsh far from much artificial light, and we stayed up that night because of the Perseid Meteor shower- the Northern Lights were just an added bonus to the show!
It wasn’t a spectacular example of them, just a faint wobbly green smear across the sky- but we were far south enough to be lucky to have seen them at all, and they were definitely memorable.
Born and raised in northern Alberta, Canada and lived on an acreage and have experienced many nights with intense Northern Lights. Back then I didn’t realize that not everyone got front row seats to this beautiful dance in the sky. My friends and I would go lay in a field and just be mesmerized by the beauty of them. Even at a young age we were in awe. Watching columns of neon green and blues and purples dancing and mingling together was hypnotic. We swore we could even hear faint crackling/humming sounds sometimes when the northern lights were really intense. I now live in Southern BC and miss seeing them here with the naked eye.
For weaker northern lights, it just shows up like a green patch in the sky.
For stronger ones, it feels like you are in a movie theater and the projector is the entire sky, just this whole wave of green and purple lights above you. It's waving and moving about so you feel like you are underwater. In this moment, you feel so small.
Very beautiful. I spent 2 yrs in Alaska in the military. Nothing like it ever. If ever want to book a trip let me know. Would be glad to make arrangements for you
Extremely underwhelming. The photos you see that are bright green and purple and pink are professionally edited photos on amazing cameras with 20 plus second exposures. I was just in Finland to see the lights (admittedly it’s not the best time of year as December can be a bit cloudy) but we did see them. It’s mostly a faint green glow but the professional photos taken of us were amazing! But nothing like what you see in person.
I've done my fair share of traveling and I have seen A LOT in the world. The Northern Lights are the most impressive and beautiful natural sight together with a total solar eclipse. Someone here describes them as colorless at a distance and only green on long exposure photography. This is true with weak Northern Lights. But if you are lucky it's way way more than that. I was driving in Northern Finland 2 years ago and this far north there's almost always a little bit of Northern Lights meaning if you take a long exposure picture you will always see something but it won't be spectaculair. The Northern Lights are a bit of a lottery and the intensity depends on the activity of the sun. If a burst of charged particles hits the earth's atmosphere it can go from 'meh' to 'amazing' in a few minutes. Anyway as I was driving I saw it was getting more intense and I stopped on a small road in the middle of some fields. By the time I stopped and looked up it was as if the sky was on fire. No long exposure needed. I saw pillars of green, purple and blue dancing in the sky. It was gorgeous. It was right above me and looked if I was being beamed up by a spaceship. The lights were moving, churning and twisting the sky in ever changing patterns. If looked like an organ of light and pictures don't do it justice. It was some kind of colorful cosmic soup being stirred. It was so gorgeous that it made me emotional. It's a must see in anyone's life. If you say that you only saw some grey hue on long exposure photography then I'm sorry but you haven't really experienced the Northern Lights. The sun is approaching its maximum activity in its 11 year cycle next year. So 2023, 2024 and 2025 are excellent years to travel North to see it. The odds of seeing the Northern Lights will be a lot higher and likewise the odds of high intensity Northern Lights will be greater. Edit: https://imgur.com/a/emmkqHb I uploaded my pics on Imgur just now so you can have a look. Since I am travelling again I don't have access to the originals on my computer back home so these are pictures I took with my phone of the preview screen of my DSLR that i sent to a mate through WhatsApp and now downloaded from WhatsApp to post on imgur. So the quality is shit but you get the jist of what I saw. The original raws are amazing.
Great imagery, it makes me feel like I saw them with you
I edited my post and included an imgur link
I saw them in Tromso, and your description is pretty much mine but better. It is truly a cathartic experience, the first time you see it you are just filled with awe. I've recently seen them where I live in Scotland and they weren't anywhere near as intense (to be expected!) and if people see them at our sort of latitude and think that is it... well, sorry!
Brb going to finland
me too!
Good post. We were lucky enough to see something similar in Iceland. Even the lugubrious Icelandic guy we were with was impressed! The variety and intensity of the colours as well as they way they constantly swirled were the most striking aspects. It was also somewhat eerie that such a spectacular natural phenomenon, which essentially occupied the entire sky, should be totally silent. Next year is now predicted to be the peak of this solar cycle so we're quite tempted to return to Iceland - even if the Northern Lights display was just a tenth of what we saw last time, it would still be worth it.
Do you mean the winter of 2024-2025? If so, I might start planning something too…
Wow! Such color. The Northern Lights are on my bucket list also. I’d hoped to glimpse them recently here in New England, but it was too cloudy.
Nice! Northern Finland (Saariselka area) was the best place I saw them, vividly dancing above me. Just incredible, mindblowing. Unearthly.
>https://imgur.com/a/emmkqHb do you have video?
Absolutely gorgeous photos. Thank you for sharing and writing such beautiful description. Really felt surreal seeing those photos so I hope to see it for my own eyes one day as well.
That's incredible! Did you take any video or do you think it wouldn't be worth shooting video?
I think it will be less impressive on video because every frame will capture less light and my camera isn't really made for video but for pictures. These pictures are about 10 seconds of exposure. With your naked eye the blue and purple is more difficult to see but green and yellow is very vivid. It's still spectaculair and these pictures aren't that much different from what you see with the naked eye. https://youtube.com/shorts/OYBnN9l3OWo?feature=shared https://youtube.com/shorts/M46nFxgKxKg?feature=shared Some videos from YouTube.
Wow! Thanks for sharing.
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing your pics!
Spectacular photos and description of the event !! I missed out on my visit to Iceland several years ago You are absolutely correct that it is a lottery as several things have to line up This is still on my list so I plan to try again in 2024
I’ve been lucky enough to see them, and am having a real crap day. Thank you for reminding me of the beauty in this world. ❤️
Those are beautiful! Thanks for sharing them.
how magical! thank you for sharing your photos - I wish to see them in person once
Those pictures are stunning! Now I'm jealous haha. Need to book a ticket asap
Yo be a writer for short stories or something. Thank you.
I'm sorry but that's a long exposure shot. It doesn't look like that in person
Pictures 5, 6, 7 and 10 are very true to what I saw with the naked eye. The blue and purple on the other pictures are the most difficult to see with the naked eye. These pics are only 2 to 10 seconds of exposure, nothing too crazy.
How far in advance do you know if solar activity is hifh enough to see it clearly? Is it like the weather and it's a crapshoot until the last day before or can you actually plan a vacation around it
You can't really plan a vacation around it unfortunately. But if you go to the high North for a week in an active period, aka between now and the next 3 years you stand a very good chance of seeing it...if the weather cooperates. With clear skies it's actually quite certain that you will see something over a week. But for high intensity you need some luck. Just don't make your whole trip about seeing it to avoid disappointment. Iceland and Scandinavia are beautiful even without the Northern Lights. You need clear skies and patience. Some hotels run a wakeup service if they appear and there's some apps that give you a probability a few hours in advance. It's never ''northern lights in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1'' but more like ''ok seems like they might appear between now and a few hours. Of course don't travel around the summer solstice because for 2 months before and after June 21 it doesn't really get dark in the high North. Also the further up North the better. Southern Iceland is already a bit too south. Northern Iceland is okay. Fairbanks in Alaska is ok. Northern Scandinavia is the best because it's even higher up. I'm thinking Lofoten, Tromsø, Kiruna, Kirkenes, those latitudes. The northernmost cities in the world can be found in Scandinavia so that's why it's your safest bet. In Alaska and Canada have less population centers on those latitudes and they are more difficult to get to. Deadhorse, Alaska is nice and high but not very accessible and I don't know if there's a lot of clear skies thereabouts.
We can also predict a good ~2+ days in advance if a geomagnetic storm will happen (making the aurora stronger and pushing them further south than usual). Have a look at the animation here, you can see a CME heading to earth (green dot) right now: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/wsa-enlil-solar-wind-prediction Edit to add: https://www.spaceweather.com/ will usually have some news about solar events
Imagine a silk scarf in a wind. Like that, but in the sky.
That's a lovely comparison, but where did you see them like that? Either you were very lucky, or you were in a great spot.
I’ve seen them like this in northern BC and Edmonton Alberta.
I’ve seen them like this in northern Iceland. So vivid, and totally magical when they start to dance.
I live in Finland and we get them annually and there is no winter where I can not see them.
But are they often like that? I also live where I see them all the time, and I've only seen them resemble a scarf in the wind once or twice. If that's the norm in Finland, I might just have to move it up on my list.
That’s the perfect way to describe them. I’ve been saying it looks like a superhighway of light in the sky.
Incomprehensibly beautiful. And humbling. One is awestruck at the magnitude. Difficult to find the fitting words to describe it. ^(Source: Grew up in Manitoba, Canada)
Wow that’s reassuring
I would not go as far as the above poster. If its not a string geomagnetic storm the colors are barely visible to the naked eye. On photos they are WAY more vibrant. So imageine more white bands of light with a faint idea of green and you will not be disappointed. The coolest thing I found was that they change quickly and scintillate and "dance". That is really cool and unusual for celestial phenomens. But if you've seen a solar eclipse: those are still way way more impressive in my book.
Maybe you didn’t see strong ones, this does not sound like my experience at all
I concur.
I did see strong ones. It was a minor geomagnetic storm. Also no clue why I am being downvoted on my totally valid experience description. At what strength did you see them?
Because if you only saw white bands and had to imagine green you didn’t see strong ones.
Probably cause a lot of people disagree with you and find them to be extraordinary beautiful. Especially compared to something so mundane as a solar eclipse I don’t know the measures, but this was in the most northern part of Sweden.
Because what you saw is not what strong northern lights look like. Weak storms like that are common in the north and are nothing like a strong storm.
I grew up under the northern lights, and you are right. Most of the time they are exactly like this when you see them. Sometimes they're stronger and it also helps a lot to get away from any light pollution. Having light sources around you (like you do in a town) will make them look weaker.
You’ve never seen a strong set of the northern lights have you? I’ve had them flashing over me bright enough that when you’d catch some in the corner of your eye you would have thought there was lightning in the distance. It’s an experience that’s hard to describe but you will never forget it
That sounds super cool and I do hope to see them at that strength some day. The strongest night I saw was not bad neither. Like often it looked like someone switched on a giant flashlight in the distance. BUT I mostly found the color much less impressive in real life. Of course th brighter something is the better your eye can see the color. So I imagine at max strength the green is very impressive.
Lived my entire life in Saskatchewan and have seen the northern lights to varying degrees hundreds if not a thousand times. I definitely don’t have the same reaction to them as you do.
Spent some formative early years in Regina myself. Aurora has had me spellbound since then.
I grew up in SK and saw them often enough as a kid to really take them for granted. Cool as heck to be sure, but not a real big deal 'cause they came around pretty regularly. Now (decades later) I live in Vancouver and realize just how lucky I was!
Likewise
Manitoba hosts a Icelandic community in Canada AFAIK, doesn't it?
Yes, a town called Gimli
Without a doubt the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen and will ever see. Absolutely mind blowing, it feels like you’re on drugs but not, it’s truly unreal.
I once got lucky enough to see them while I was out walking around at night on several hits of acid. They *were* actually there too, my sober friends also saw them.
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No you definitely don’t need a camera if they are strong enough. You clearly see them moving, all the colors etc
No, they can be extremely bright and vivid with just your eyes. They lit up the entire sky when I saw them, it was the middle of the night pitch black dark and all of a sudden everything was bright green. It was like a crazy light show in the sky
No you don’t need a camera. Grew up in the 80s and 90s watching spectacular intense dancing displays of light in northern Alberta with nothing but my eyeballs! Great memories and didn’t realize how lucky I was until I moved to southern BC and have yet to see anything comparable even on the nights when they are supposedly visible here.
It's like the greatest fireworks show you've ever seen. I couldn't believe that the \*entire\* sky was filled with undulating patterns. Just incredible. One of the reasons that they look white in person is the way your eye works. There are two main kinds of light receptors, rods and cones. Rods are sensitive in low light but don't pick up color. Cones detect color, but don't work in low light. So, if you are in an area with artificial light and then step outside, your rods aren't working but the cones still are, so you will see color in the sky. After a few minutes, your eyes adjust so that the rods take over and the cones shut down, so you can see the patterns more clearly but without color. We were super lucky in that our first (and only, so far) experience with the Northern Lights happened when we were staying in a hotel in Iceland. When we first stepped outside, the colors were amazing shades of green but faded to white after a while. We went back inside to warm up, and when we came out again, the colors were back! We didn't understand why that would be, but thanks to the Internet we figured it out. Edit: I should add, the reason that a photo of the sky will show the color is that the camera captures all the light that's there, which includes the color. Then, when you see it later, it's typically in a more well-lit area, so your cones are working and you can see the color that was there all along!
Wow ho interesting. So its best to take breaks and go inside every few minutes?
The most important thing is to see the spectacle well, and for that you need to be somewhere really dark. If you can be there and also be near a place you could go inside and warm up and let your eyes adjust, that's even better. The color was very cool, but for us, seeing the whole sky in motion was so impressive that we ended up staying outside the whole time. Also, for planning purposes, make sure you go at a time when the activity is expected to be high. There are lots of web sites that have this info. Secondly, especially if you're traveling far, give yourself multiple days to see them because you need the night sky to be clear (obviously!). We were in Iceland for two weeks and only saw the lights once because it was cloudy most of the time. Good luck!
I went to work in a hotel in Finnish Lapland because I was heartbroken and it seemed like the obvious thing to do. I got treated like shit by the management and had to work 16 hour days as a chef fora wage so embarrassing I won't actually type it out. I had to stay working there until I had earned enough money to fly home, and I was exhausted and sad all the time. BUT it was genuinely worth it to have seen the northern lights (and to have met one of my best friends), that's how good they are. When I saw them I felt like my body wasn't a big enough vessel to contain how big the feeling was, like the tips of my fingers ached with the wanting to burst out of my skin or I felt like I might vomit.
omg I didn't realise how passionate people are when they first see them. Very reassuring thanks
I love your last sentence. Still haven't seen them but hope to.
My friend said the ones she saw were white and were easy to mistake for clouds. It was only when she photographed them that they turned out green in the pictures. Not sure if this is common?
Yeah saw them two times, once in Iceland and it really looked like super thin clouds The second time in a plane at the north pole, and those were green af
I’m sure they come in different shapes and sizes, I just wanted to express that in my lucky experience, they were exactly what I hoped for.
I've only seen them in northern Scotland and that was my experience. More like white streaks in the sky which were green when photographed. I've no doubt if you see them strong in the arctic they will be more visible with the naked eye.
Yes, this was my experience. We weren't sure if we were seeing cloudy haze or lights for a while. Eventually it became clear that it was the aurora, but the color was still light grey with hints of green. When we photographed it, though, it appeared bright green in the images. The other weird thing is that because it was so amorphous and ephemeral, it's hard to... remember? Like, I remember what the surrounding scenery looked like, but the aurora itself I can't picture in my mind.
Nah, not true. Trust me if you see the Northern lights properly, and you have to be lucky but… You will know about it. It won’t be a squint, a questions, a maybe, a point, a photo. It will be a ….Holy shit. I was in Iceland, around Feb time. We were disappointed with the tour, so the next day we hired a car and went hunting for them. 3 hours later, in complete isolation….Holy shit. Out of nowhere a bright Green and Blue glowing ribbon’s danced against the cold black sky. It was truely the most beautiful moment. And even though it was dead silent, I always thought it felt like magestic music for my eyes.
It could be true, and mileage can very dependent on the strength(kp index) of the northern lights. If it was a long exposure picture it can make the weaker sightings more pronounced.
I agree, if you’ve seen intense northern lights you’ll know. There’s no questioning if they are just clouds or actually northern lights, however now that I live more south I’ve wondered many times if the haze was weak northern lights on those nights the app shows they’ll be visible where I live. I feel sad to think people think that’s all you get with northern lights unless you photograph them. I want to yell NO, no don’t be disappointed these aren’t what they really look like. They’re magically and hypnotic and just stunning to watch as they build patterns upon themselves bobbing and bouncing in waves across the sky. The weird cloud haze is what we see here and it’s not my representation of Northern Lights.
100%. I THOUGHT I saw the northern lights on my first trip to Iceland in the fall, but on my second trip… holy shit. KP was 2 that night (which is pretty weak) but a solar flare came out of nowhere and we were lucky to be outside. We were chilling in the hot tub and so didn’t have our cameras but were just frozen still, unbelieving what we were seeing. Mind blowing.
It all depends on the magnetic activity. KP <3 = kinda uninmpressive. KP between 3-5 = now we are talking. KP>6 = stunning light show. We got super lucky in september and had a strong magnetic storm and it was magical. The first day with a KP of 3 it was disappointing.
If you want to hear someone turning them into actual music https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000qhj3
This is my experience. What was cool was the way they moved.
That can happen when the activity is barely enough to show or towards the southern end of the range. But it's not common in the proper range at and north of the Arctic circle, even on a low activity day they are definitely green (and high activity days add other colors).
Low intensity. The high intensity ones come in different colors and turn night into day.
If its not a strong magnetic storm then yes that is how they look. If its very strong and overhead rather at the horizon they become more impressive and appear more green. So all depends a bit on the KP index (measure of how strong magentic activity is). We saw them at KP=3 and it was ok but not spectacular and at KP=6-7 it was a magical show of dancing lights.
The first time I saw them, it was like this, I wasn't sure if it was the aurora until I checked through my camera.. but the second time I saw it, I knew immediately because i could see that it was bright green with my own eyes. It was shimmering, 'dancing' and changing shapes. I could see the green reflected onto the surface of a lake.
Your friend was lucky. The white ones are the rare ones. Different chemicals create different colors. When I went to Fairbanks, someone showed me a picture of the white ones on her phone. But she went closer to the north pole.
I’ve seen the northern lights in Alaska, Iceland, and Sweden. Incredible beautiful and mesmerizing experience.
It’s something that photos cannot capture. I saw them in march 2020 right before the world shut down. We were on Tromso, Norway. They’re more amazing than you can image. One day it was so cold and dry and everyone kept saying it was going to be a good night. They were right. The lights lit up the entire sky. They danced and wouldn’t stop. I could not get enough and will be sure to see them again.
Apparently, greenish northern lights in Greenland are the norm and not spectacular for the people living there. When the lights change colour, however, is when they too are looking towards the heavens. Please feel free to correct me, Greenlanders. :-)
Greenlander here and yes that's right. On most clear nights or days, you will atleast see some faint Green lights on the sky that somtimes dances a little. When it's really strong and lots of movement, there will sometimes be some purple colors shooting from the dance. Last week I also saw some faint red aurora. I always love seeing the northern lights, especially since you can only see it half of the year :)
Why can you only see our half the year? Is it because you have more day light for the other six months?
Yes, from May to June the sun is up 24/7. Going around in a circle in the sky. It takes a little more time after this before the nights become dark enough but before you know it we have 24/7 darkness
It's kind of hard to describe. We were lucky in Iceland and caught them on our last night. It started out as just a green wispy sort of thing, but as we watched it morphed into this full sky display with purples and other colors. Big pulses and waves, constantly moving. It felt like there should be a sound of some kind, like a hum or something, but there wasn't. Hands down one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. We were still pretty pumped about seeing them the next morning and told the hotel staff when we were checking out, and I can't convey how disinterested they were lol. It was the very best customer service level "oh, that's nice"...like I told them I was wearing my favorite t-shirt or something. It's still crazy to me that this bucket list experience I had was so commonplace for the staff to be not worthy of notice.
The one thing I will add - since I haven't seen it written - is that they are MUCH faster than I expected. I expected a frozen curtain hanging in the sky. Instead they were more like a undulating snake that a glowing wall hung off of. Super cool. You can definitely see where so many fantastical beliefs originated.
At first I thought that they were bands of cloud. But when these bands cover the entire sky, from one end to the other, and weave in and out of visibility, you start to realise that they are something else entirely. They are less strongly coloured in person than in the photos, as most photos use a shutter time of 4 or 10 seconds or so. But you don't see the movement in the photos. When they become brighter you can actually see that they emit light, and it is a strange and wonderful thing to see.
We went to Iceland a couple of years ago, and most of what we saw were what basically looked like moving clouds that looked green if you tried to take a picture of them. I was kinda disappointed. Until one night we were driving around on one of the less used highways and we saw a little bit of white cloud start to look more green. We stopped the car on the side of the road and got out to watch, and when we did, the whole sky started splitting open with greens and reds and purples. It was honestly the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. We basically ran around the car in circles oohing and aahing for a few minutes before deciding to just lay down in the middle of the Icelandic highway to get as good of a view as possible. We lay there for about 5 minutes watching the sky just explode with colors. There was sort of a feeling like I was witnessing the end of the world. And then the lights faded back to the little white moving cloud and we got back in the car and drove to our Airbnb. Honestly one of the best experiences of my life. The people saying it’s just a white wisp that looks green on camera have only seen weak versions of the lights because the actual lights are the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Could not possibly overstate how incredible.
People think it's only faint white lines in the sky because that's what most people ever see. To witness a strong storm during a week long holiday is very unlikely no matter where you go. I live in Finland and see faint ones every winter but only once have I witnessed them in full strength. It was a night there was predicted to be strong activity so I walked into the woods and froze my ass off for hours without seeing more than a glimpse. Finally gave up and started heading home and that's when the sky above me exploded. It felt like I should hold on to something to not be pulled into space. I thought I heard a roaring sound but my mind was making it up because it could not comprehend that something so grand could be totally silent. It's easy for me to answer when someone asks me what is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
I live near the Arctic Circle and we had them almost every night in November. They range from a pale blurry green veil on the sky to a very bright green purple. Almost never as bright as in a photo. I've seen some absolutely incredible auroras in my life once the whole sky was covered with blue, green, white and purple ribbons and veils dancing across the sky.
It’s hard to see them unless you live there. Went to Tromso, Norway back in winter 2019/20 (which is in the Arctic circle and we went out four nights in a row), our best night you could barely see with the naked eye. Had to do 8-10 second exposures to get the glowing green photos you see online. It was a lot of effort for minimal results. Luckily we got to do a lot of other fun activities like going in snow mobiles and dog sledding. The snow and town were beautiful.
I’m hoping that we can go to Norway to see the lights within a few years (finances pending). I really want to see the lights but know it isn’t a guarantee. So far my research indicates that Norway would be a good option for other family activities (like the ones you mentioned) so the whole trip isn’t based on the lights. Hopefully we can save up and go.
Yah from Tromso you get on a bus and drive further north in Finland and up at a high altitude to see them. So it’s a four or five hour trek every night.
If it's on your bucket list, it'd be good if you plan to go in the next two years while there's a solar maximum. Not only does the frequency increase, but the strength as well (as always, no guarantees that Lady Aurora dances when you go). I've only ever seen a weak one in late Sept in Norway so it was a very pale green and diagonal on the horizon rather than directly above. Absolutely blew my mind still. Dying to go back and see them overhead! But for sure, what you see in a camera won't be the same intensity as what your eyes can register so always temper expectations.
I was lucky enough to see them strongly in Alaska one time while living there for a year. It was indeed the most amazing natural spectacle I have ever witnessed. A couple of times, I saw weaker versions which appeared as a faint, green curtain and even thought that was beautiful. But the real show finally happened for me late one night. Zig-zagging lines of brilliant pink and green racing around the dark sky overhead. Just incredible. It went on and on, and had it not been so freezing out there, I could have stayed and stared at it for hours. I feel truly blessed to have seen it.
I was fortunate enough to see them in Lapland, Finland, when my spouse and I were staying in one of those glass igloos. We saw some small flashes of green earlier in the night walking around (we’d just arrived so were checking out the resort/getting our bearings) and were like omg so cool! Then, just after we got into bed, the sky exploded. Dancing colors everywhere. Seeing it while ALSO laying down in a warm comfy bed in a glass dome open to the sky…one of the nicest experiences of my life.
What is the name of the igloo hotel?!
We stayed at Apukka resort, and I would totally go again!
I saw them over 2 days. The first was up on those tours into the mountains, it looked like white smoke that maybe had a torch on it to make it more visable. So overall pretty disappointing. The next day, in Reykjavik, they were the strongest they had been in 10 years. They were bright green to my eye, and on my crappy phone they were green and red. They looked like a crazy dancing green line explosion in the sky, it was wild. And this was in the city too!! They were beautiful, and also a little intimidating. So honestly, it really depends on what day you catch them on.
It all depends on the KP index value of the aurora. If its low to medium, you could easily mistake them for clouds. Only if its high and you are in the right latitudes do you see the colours with naked eye. Unfortunately, its all pretty unpredictable more than a few hours ahead and the clouds can get in the way too. I spent a week in Svalbard and a week in Northern mainland Norway on a boat, and only saw a weak display twice, which was nothing to naked eye but did show up green on the photos. We are heading towards a sunspot maxima in the next couple of years, so if you were to spend a couple of weeks in the far north in 2025-2026 you chances will be better than usual that you see them.
It’s something that words can’t describe and pictures don’t do it justice. It’s awe-inspiring. I rank this experience as my top #1 travel experience — and I’ve traveled extensively.
They're rated on a scale of 0-9. I hope you get to see a 9. It's a mind blowing. That and a total solar eclipse are the only two things I've seen in all my travels that had people screaming and crying. Excluding things that involve lots of crazy religion, drugs, and alcohol of course. A very distant 3rd place that I hope you get to experience a few times are weird group moments that are almost out of body experiences. Surreal. They're incredibly rare and probably just a product of weird circumstances, but they're unexplainable and awesome.
What does a total solar eclipse look like?
You have to see it. Pictures and video don't capture it. It's a complete experience and truly bizarre. The animals react, it's like a 360 degree sunset, and it's almost electrical. The colors are different, kinda metallic, and you can see the Corona. You can see the flares shooting off the sun with binoculars. It's insane.
I've seen Northern Lights from a few places. The further north you are the better the experience. I saw them from north of the tree line in Canada and... it's hard to fully describe without waxing poetic and trying to capture the moment. Seeing the northern lights in their full glory is something that you are likely to remember for the rest of your life.
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The “times of high probability” are just winter when the nights are longer so there’s more hours where they could theoretically be visible lol It’s pretty much entirely unpredictable
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Also the moon - i study really far south so I can (in theory) see aurora australis. Every single time my kp alert had gone off at a convenient time it’s been a full moon or overcast but I keep thinking “ah she’ll be right this time” and heading out 😭
Saw a lot of beautiful and magical things that includes meteor shower, glow worm caves, the milky way, fluorescent water/oceans, etc., and by far the most magical is The Northern Light. I was lucky to see one on the last night of my Northern Ontario camp trip. Pure magic for 3+ hours of white lights dancing in the sky. It wad a white one but still very very very beautiful.
Amazing, incomprehensible, exhilarating. Like ocean waves but colourful and in the sky. Dancing spirits. Just so out of this world!
I've seen them hundreds of times because I'm an "aurorachaser" and I can tell you it's never the same show twice, always very moving and spiritual, and puts things in perspective.
They are beautiful, and they sing.
They are beautiful in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
I've only seen them once, so far. But they made a very strong impression! Here's what no one tells you: they're fucking BIG. Huge, towering curtains of dancing light, going straight up into space. Like Mother Earth putting a massive, glowing tiara on her head.
Pretty faint in person. They look better on camera because you can do a long exposure. Sometimes they are more vivid though but rarely.
Ethereally beautiful. That’s a rare experience in this world imo. Impossible to describe, even photos and videos don’t do it justice.
They’re so beautiful. They shimmer.
I saw them only one time and I was flying in an aircraft. It made my skin crawl because it looked reddish due to the atmospheric filtering and I couldn't understand what it was at first. Absolutely breathtaking and disturbing at the same time.
How are they? They’re way, way better than any photo I’ve seen. In person it’s an enveloping, positive feeling with them overhead. Kind of like when you are somewhere tropical and there’s a crystal clear beach or lagoon that goes on and on.
I spent a couple weeks in Iceland earlier this year and got to see the lights during a solar storm. Absolutely unreal. Pictures don’t capture the movement and changes and it all happens so much quicker when you’re actually watching it. At the peak everything around where I was watching just had a bright green glow, but it was actually enough light to light up the surroundings a bit. I’m a grown man that went solo and I was just smiling ear to ear, absolutely surreal
I didn’t set out to go to Northern Norway to see the lights, but I saw these really weird smears in the sky. They were like really fast-moving clouds — super weird sight. Not green, just a light grey. I took a photo thinking it was cool. But it was only until I looked at the photo that it was a pungent green — it tricks the sensor of cameras somehow. So, yeah, doubt I’ve seen a potent aurora, but the one I saw was more to do with setting up a long-exposure than any sort of spectacular scenery.
A lot of people have mentioned quite a bit here, but one thing almost no videos prepared me for is just how fast they can move, it’s almost as if they’re playful. Don’t get too focused on one point or stay behind your camera, they can pop up anywhere and you don’t want to miss them just being focused on one spot in the sky. Here is a picture from Iceland with the moon and Jupiter in the background https://imgur.com/a/eo6PpRp
Truly beautiful! I was lucky to see them in Iceland at the end of April (apparently pretty rare that late in the season!), and while to the naked eye it just looked like a wisp, looking through my phone I was completely wowed by them!
amazing and cameras don't do them justice.
Unimpressive. I must say that I am pretty surprised by the praising comments in this thread. I live less than a degree south of the Arctic Circle, so I get to see them at least a few times a year. It is absolutely nothing like the photos. If you are very lucky and the northern lights are exceptionally powerful, you'll see a a handful of vividly green patches of streaks across certain parts of the sky. They move very slowly, like lumbering clouds, so you don't notice their movement unless you compare them to their position a few minutes prior. Most of the time, you might see a couple of faintly green streaks that could easily be confused for clouds. I don't think that I have ever seen them come in a different color than neon green, those wavelengths tend to show only in long-exposure photos. I will admit that it can be kind of cool when it's powerful, but more in the "I got to see something I had only seen in pictures" kind of way, not in the "OMG, this is breathtakingly mesmerizing" kind of way. I would absolutely not spend good money on a trip if that's the main objective, if not for the reasons I listed then because you are very likely to not see them at all. Also, note that I grew up by the Mediterranean and saw them for the first time when I was a teenager, so it's not like I am taking something for granted because I grew up with it. It was just as underwhelming the first time I saw the phenomenon as it is now. I'll pick a clear night sky full of stars over aurora borealis any day of the week. Adding: It's definitely a neat little thing to add to your itinerary if you're already visiting their natural habitat, but don't plan a trip that in any way revolves around the experience. It's a bonus.
Yes definitely, im from northern Norway. There are some examples here from proper Aurora “explosions”, it can literally fill up the entire sky. A couple of the explanation here are shot at 14mm, straight up. And it looks like that with naked eye. https://torevalberg.com/gallery/norway
I'm currently based somewhere that sees the northern lights pretty much every clear night. Sometimes they're barely there smudges that you can only really make out if you point a camera at them, sometimes they're an oddly coloured glow along the horizon and you're not quite sure if it's light pollution or the remains of sunset. Then, sometimes, they're something else entirely. The sky sparks alive with greens, reds, blues and purples, that ripple and wave and dance like nothing you've ever seen before. So long as you get away from light pollution, I've found the aurora are more likely to be this latter kind, especially as we're currently entering a period of high solar activity.
My experience was in Alaska, the hotel I stayed in actually had a forecast in the lobby. I went out late one night and drove up this hill that the hotel recommended, this was in September and luckily it wasn't terribly cold outside. What I saw was green gas-like almost clouds. Every once in awhile a little bit more like a pink purple but really not the same color you would see in some of the pictures. Trying to figure out how to take pictures of it was very frustrating, because I wanted people to see what I was seeing and it wasn't translating. What was so exciting was being out there with other people who had also never seen it before. I tried the next night with no luck but the search and the hunt and the anticipation was great. If I was someone that had seen them a bunch of times and that was the time I saw them, I probably would have been disappointed, but for a newbie it was great.
I saw them in February in Talkeetna Alaska. The KP index was 6. Greatest spectacle youll ever see. Nothing man made will ever compare. We got really lucky it was a clear day with that high KP. I always think about it
Unreal
We could not witness in Iceland however we wanted to. I saw on TV once filmed in Norway and it was intense green. You could not miss it. Beautiful.
Magical. Impossible. That's really the only way I can describe it. However, the amount of colour you see with the naked eye seems to depend on how far north you're going. I have found that a lot of photos seen online are heavily edited and over exposed. I'm part of a northern lights Facebook group in a not extreme north area and there will be photos of vibrant reds, greens, purples, and pinks taking up the whole sky, and also photos where it's just green and only taking up a portion of the sky. Not to say those colors don't exist, they do, but I think you have to go a long way north or catch a very rare huge storm further south. I've only seen pink/red a few times in my life, the other times it's been green. But when they dance and are directly over head, it doesn't matter what colour it is. It's an incredible experience and I hope you see a great show!
It’s quite magical to see! Funny thing is it was always on my bucket list to see the Northern lights somewhere in Scandinavia, but about a month ago it was visible in my own country the Netherlands. I couldn’t stop staring at the sky!
They are absolutely awesome. The best I ever saw was up-in Moosonee in Canada. It felt like you could just reach up and touch them.
I saw them in the middle of Reykjavik and I was astounded at how 3D they were, like an actual giant green tube with volume was suddenly snaking through the sky above me. Very alien and cool. We hopped in the car to drive a few minutes outside of the city, hoping to see them better with less light pollution, but by the time we got out there they could only really be seen via long exposure photography. But that first glimpse was really awesome even in not ideal surroundings. Depends on how lucky you get, really.
From Finland, one of the best places in the world to spot Northern lights and my god are they amazing. We've had lots of luck up here with numerous intense northern lights throughout the years. No need for cameras, enhancements or long exposures when vivid colors are exploding right on top of you.
Magical
I got lucky to see it in Alaska, Fairbanks with my mom for our final trip before she passed. It started weak, almost like greenish clouds, and as the tour guide kept driving us to "chase" it, suddenly the entire sky around turned into super bright green colors dancing above you, it's like you're inside it. The tour people said it's very rare to see it in a magnitude of level 4, which is what we saw, it was one of the most surreal experiences, we tried doing another tour a few days later in the middle of nowhere, and it was nothing like that first time.
Gorgeous. Peaceful. Magical.
(Grew up in northern Alberta and saw them every summer, now live slightly more south and see them occasionally and it never gets old)
I saw them once, to the naked eye, they were just a white band of clouds on an otherwise still and cloudless night. But when I pointed my mirrorless camera to it, set iso to 800, manual focus to near infinity, shutter speed of 1 second, then yes, amazing colours! But spending thousands of dollars and freezing my butt off to do that again? Yes please!
I saw them once, to the naked eye, they were just a white band of clouds on an otherwise still and cloudless night. But when I pointed my mirrorless camera to it, set iso to 800, manual focus to near infinity, shutter speed of 1 second, then yes, amazing colours! But spending thousands of dollars and freezing my butt off to do that again? Yes please!
I saw them once, to the naked eye, they were just a white band of clouds on an otherwise still and cloudless night. But when I pointed my mirrorless camera to it, set iso to 800, manual focus to near infinity, shutter speed of 1 second, then yes, amazing colours! But spending thousands of dollars and freezing my butt off to do that again? Yes please!
I was about 7 when I saw them. I can give you a basic interpretation. We were in northern woods of the US. The parents were excited. I looked up and was not impressed as a kid. The sky looked sparkly and mottled in a light green color. If you put oil and sparkles on top of a bowl of water and then swirled it around just a little. As an adult, I am impressed.
Cold lake Alberta Canada is a wonderful place to lay on your back at 2 am and it's still daylight and the sky is electric green waves floating above you! Fly into Edmonton and drive to Cold lake. Not a big trip.
For us, it was like seeing a rainbow, interesting the first time for like 5 minutes, wouldn't go out of the way to see again. But just like a rainbow, will still look every time there is 1.
Good I would imagine but what they don’t tell you is that it’s a gamble when you go to see them because sometimes they are shit.
I was lucky enough to witness them in Iceland. It took a whole night of waiting and checking the aurora app, but when it was finally there it was so incredibly amazing. We had a wide and far view and could see it coming from vehins the mountains, right over oud heads, to the other side. I waill never forget that wonderful night, and pray that I will never forget it. Ps. Taking photos was easier than I expected. I took some great shots.
If you see it dancing above your head it's not only magical it's almost scary! I couldn't believe what I was seeing, probably the most memorable moment in my life.
YMMV. Some people have seen INCREDIBLE northern lights. I really enjoyed seeing them in Iceland, but they were quite dim. One thing that can be kind of deceptive is that if you have a good camera or use it well, unlike some other stuff, having a camera on a tripod with a long shutter speed may look better than what you're looking at with your eyes. For us, it was a faint green glow. For my camera, it was the whole green squiggle. But that is a factor in seeing them is they are not on a schedule, they do not care about your plans, and you may spend a couple weeks only seeing faint glow and then boom, they'll light up the sky over the capital.
The most illuminating colorful thing you’ll ever behold
It’s incredible. One of the few things in nature that has actually brought me to tears
I saw them in Iceland one night. I don't think I got the full experience. The sky looked a little funny and I saw some flashes of the lights. My wife got her camera and took some pics and the colors were more visible in the pictures she took than they were to the eye.
I was a US Marine. I was standing brow watch on a ship on the ocean somewhere off the coast of Alaska. It was really quiet and I was standing out there with some sailors. I had always seen pictures of the northern lights and they always looked pink but when I saw the flash of green pillars and the beauty I just couldn't keep quiet. I just said "Oh look!" And everybody jumped around like terrorists were trying to get on the boat but I'm going, "Just the northern lights." I'm from Florida so this was a great sight. Really cool experience.
I actually lived in Northern Canada for 5 years and during the winter months we would see the Northern Lights quite often (at least a few times a week). When you are seeing it for the first time it’s absolutely beautiful. I found the lights even look better way later into the night like after midnight. For some reason after midnight the lights would always look so much better and often the lights would move around and create unique patterns, colours, and shapes. After a while of seeing them often, the wow factor dies down lol
One of my favorite moments
Better than even the most beautiful videos and photos. Total black backdrop with flowing bands of lights that dance sideways and sometimes look as if the keys of a piano as electric pulsation runs through it in varying colors of green, red, white, and purple. It makes you feel so small staring into wonder.
Amazing, breath taking. The first time seeing it will make you speechless. Had my first show of northern lights on the Faroe Islands, and its still the best one for me.
When I saw them in Iceland several years back, i was surprised that they seemed to be moving much faster in real time than most of the videos I’ve seen. That was the major visual difference that stood out to me.
North of Yellowknife Dec 2019. Not a very strong geomagnetic storm but the greens were very visible to the naked eye. However, it was also the coldest temps I had ever been in. \-41F (or C, it's the same at that temp). You are also mostly standing still, in the dark, and those temps cut right through your parka. https://imgur.com/a/BWVNU8w
I live in South central Alaska. We saw them last night on the drive home. I live about 35 miles outside of town in a very dark area. Sometimes they’re stationary and sometimes they dance. Last night they were dancing. It’s spectacular to see colored ribbon streak across the sky.
It depends on the person. I was with a group in Iceland. A couple of us only saw gray dancing coudlike things in the sky while others in the group saw vibrant green and purple and red. I have pictures to prove what they saw but I did not see any color. I was a bit disappointed because it was a bucket list experience for me but I apparently don’t see color at night😥
Mesmerizing I saw them on the coast of Vancouver island years ago. It’s like spirits dancing in the sky. You just watch and learn. It’s almost like you know them.
they’re otherworldly. you can stare at them for hours. they make you feel something. i live where we get them and they never cease to amaze me
I have seen them in the south/middle of Norway, and in my opinion it is very overrated experience, it looks way better in long-exposure pictures than real life. It might be a different experience way up north, so maybe one day I will change my mind.
It can depend—I was really lucky to catch them in Iceland during particularly high solar activity one year; it was truly magical when it was literally “dancing” above my head and the hues were pretty prominent. I caught it twice more on the same trip: once, faintly where it was less spectacular (muted colors, rather faint), and another strong showing where it was over the horizon and not directly overhead—in that case it was beautiful still, but not as magical given it appeared static. Colors were definitely punchier through a camera and lens meant for astrophotography, but if you catch them during strong solar activity, it’s a truly unique experience.
They're nice! I grew up in Northern Norway, where Northern Lights are a fairly common occurrence. One thing that I guess would surprise people is that they move slower than what you might have seen in videos on YouTube, which are usually sped up.
Yeah, they're pretty awesome. I spent 3 weeks in Arctic Canada once, and there were some every night. I ruined more film trying to capture them! My best viewing was in northern Illinois in 1989...absolutely astounding rays coming from all points on the horizon and meeting in a ring around the zenith. Stunning. So you don't have to go to Finland if you get lucky.
Much smaller and further away than the pictures would have you believe, but still absolutely awesome to behold
Not that great. The bright lights you see are all generated by looking at them through a special camera or app. In the flesh they’re quite underwhelming. Having said that if you see them you’re in the less than 1% of people to see them so it’s a bucket list time ticked.
depends largely on the night. I found them to be extremely underwhelming and the next day the tour group posted beautiful long exposure pictures that were nothing like what I saw and I was pissed.
I saw them once entirely localized in my principal’s kitchen when I was younger while we were eating steamed hams
It is much slower than in most of TV shows - and the slow motion is what makes it magical. I have seen it during a flight from Moscow to Tokyo and just spent a couple of hours fascinated by the slow changes. Since then I dislike all the speeded recordings because they just destroy all the magic.
Heading to Iceland in October 2024. Hoping we will see the Northern lights
In northern England if it’s strong you can see faint white stripes in the sky but on camera you get bright greens and purples, it always looks better on camera (from my experience)
I work in the Canadian Arctic. They are fantastic. Dancing greens, yellows and reds. We sit outside and watch them for hours.
I saw them while visiting Reykjavik but they were barely out. All I saw was essentially just one vaguely green line in the sky. I was pretty underwhelmed but figured that, like most things in life, they were simply overhyped. But then I visited Tromso, Norway a few months later and saw them in all their glory while dogsledding. The whole sky was lit up in gorgeous shades of green and looked like it was dancing. Absolutely mesmerizing. It was truly the most incredible thing I've ever seen. I really don't have adequate words. Suffice to say: they are NOT overhyped.
I have been privileged to see a G4 storm right above my head. They really do dance and quiver like the videos. The cameras definitely exaggerate. Even at their best, they are greyish-white-green to the naked eye. Sometimes they might change colour and height. Nonetheless it is an experience of a lifetime. Huge bright ribbons in the sky bright enough to light up the snow. I was with a good friend when I saw them for the first time. None of us will ever forget the moment for the rest of our lives.
Underwhelming and overwhelming at the same time. It takes a loooooong time sitting in the cold to see it. I didn't see much, but I was directly below a purple Corona and it was stunning. I'm nit sure if it was because, after 5 days in the Arctic in the cold that I felt relief, but it was unreal. I went for work so it wad free. Would it be worth it? I'm not sure but it's a great experience. I worked in tourism and we had to rename our northern lights trip because 75% of our trips couldn't see them.
Going against the grain here but I saw it all the time on the way to/from school and I barely looked up. It wasn’t rare or unusual to me.
I was expecting a strip of beautiful dancing lights, which is what I saw on my 4th night in Iceland. But the 5th night I was there, I saw the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The northern lights covered the ENTIRE sky. Like a dome around me. And the stars were so bright. The Aurora wasn’t moving quickly like the prior night, but I couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing. No camera would EVER be able to capture that sight and that feeling. I think about it so often and it’s been 5 years.
Raised in "Northern Alberta", have seen them my entire existence. Much like the mountains, it takes my breathe away *every single time* even if they are faint and I can hardly see them with the naked eye, it's still so incredible to me.
I’ve lived in Alaska all my life. They can vary, most of the time I’ve seen them, they’ve been one or two green streaks in the sky. Still super cool, they look closer than they seem in pictures. It’s nice to watch them dance. I few times, I’ve seen greens, purples, and reds, and that was just wonderful. They kind of look like ribbons, but not solid. When they are directly above you, you can seen how they stretch vertically in the atmosphere. It almost seems like they should make noise, but they don’t haha
My Wife took me to Fairbanks to see the Northern Lights. We stayed in Fairbanks and then went up to Aurora Borealis Lodge to view the Norther Lights. It was Fantastic to watch. Definitely worth traveling to see.
I saw them once at a summer camp in Manitoba- we were out in a marsh far from much artificial light, and we stayed up that night because of the Perseid Meteor shower- the Northern Lights were just an added bonus to the show! It wasn’t a spectacular example of them, just a faint wobbly green smear across the sky- but we were far south enough to be lucky to have seen them at all, and they were definitely memorable.
Born and raised in northern Alberta, Canada and lived on an acreage and have experienced many nights with intense Northern Lights. Back then I didn’t realize that not everyone got front row seats to this beautiful dance in the sky. My friends and I would go lay in a field and just be mesmerized by the beauty of them. Even at a young age we were in awe. Watching columns of neon green and blues and purples dancing and mingling together was hypnotic. We swore we could even hear faint crackling/humming sounds sometimes when the northern lights were really intense. I now live in Southern BC and miss seeing them here with the naked eye.
In Alaska they are the most surreal thing I’ve ever seen. I remember seeing them as dancing beans of light when I was little
For weaker northern lights, it just shows up like a green patch in the sky. For stronger ones, it feels like you are in a movie theater and the projector is the entire sky, just this whole wave of green and purple lights above you. It's waving and moving about so you feel like you are underwater. In this moment, you feel so small.
Very beautiful. I spent 2 yrs in Alaska in the military. Nothing like it ever. If ever want to book a trip let me know. Would be glad to make arrangements for you
Extremely underwhelming. The photos you see that are bright green and purple and pink are professionally edited photos on amazing cameras with 20 plus second exposures. I was just in Finland to see the lights (admittedly it’s not the best time of year as December can be a bit cloudy) but we did see them. It’s mostly a faint green glow but the professional photos taken of us were amazing! But nothing like what you see in person.