How to See the Northern Lights

Seeing the Northern Lights for ourselves was something we’ll never forget. Their hypnotic dance across the horizon and towering rays into the night sky is something so spectacular, everybody needs to see them. We have lived in Michigan all our lives, but have only seen them once.

With a little planning, a flexible schedule, a tank of gas, and minimal equipment, you can plan a Northern Lights viewing experience that you’ll never forget!

Here’s how to be in the right place at the right time to see the Northern Lights.

When and where to see the Northern Lights

This is the most important and trickiest part of your plan. You ultimately need a combination of four things:

• Atmospheric conditions are correct for the Northern Lights
• Location in a northern latitude
• Clear, dark sky
• Unobscured view of the horizon

Get one thing wrong and your experience quickly becomes you standing in the cold in the dark wondering if the pizza place is still open. Trust me.

Proper atmospheric conditions

Besides some greenish swirling curtains of light, what are the Northern Lights exactly? According to the Northern Lights Center, “The Northern Lights are actually the result of collisions between gaseous particles in the Earth’s atmosphere with charged particles released from the sun’s atmosphere.” Essentially, the sun shoots charged particles towards earth. When these particles arrive, most are deflected by our magnetic field, but some make it through the weaker fields near the poles. These particles from the sun collide with atmospheric gas particles, causing billions and billions of tiny explosions. Combine all those microscopic explosions, and you get dancing lights. Science is fun!

So how can we predict the best atmospheric conditions? There are a lot of interesting space and atmospheric events involved here, but you won’t need to learn them. You’re just going to use a handful of forecasting tools.

Best days to see the Northern Lights

Before you get in your car to drive north, you need to verify that the Northern Lights will be available once you get there. The Northern Lights are most common between September to mid-April, so you’ll also get the advantage of long nights.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute’s Aurora Forecast offers a long-term forecasting tool you can use to plan your trip. Scroll down to the 27 Day Forecast bar chart. To best optimize your chances, you’ll want to plan your experience on the red days, when the Kp > 5. (Kp stands for “Kennziffer Planetarische”, which roughly means “planetary index”. It’s a measure of aurora strength from 0-9, 0 being very quiet and 9 being a major geomagnetic storm. You’re about to become good friends with Kp.)

Keep in mind that this site sets daily forecasts at midnight Universal Time, so an evening viewing in most of the United States would actually be the following day on the tool. For example, the forecasts for March 6 12:00AM UTC were actually experienced the evening of March 5. We almost went on the wrong day.

Remember the moon

You’ll also need to consider the brightness of the moon. The forecast tool above includes a small moon phase section, but you’ll need to consider both the moon phase and the time of the moon rise. Full moons directly overhead at midnight will ruin a good viewing opportunity, but only a few days later, a waning gibbous won’t even have risen yet. Approximate the moon’s phase and location in the sky before you schedule your trip.

Space Weather Alerts

If you’re serious about optimizing your Northern Lights viewing opportunities, spaceweatheralerts.com offers a subscription service to receive text alerts of incoming solar storms.

Location in a northern latitude

This is probably the most important factor, since you will likely need to go to the aurora rather than it coming to you. The University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute’s Aurora Forecast also does a good job of recommending viewing location. Once you determine a day with Kp > 4, you’ll need to determine where to go. Those broad green bands on the map are your goal destinations, but the green line below them represents the southernmost viewing. You’ll need to place yourself north of the green line to have any chance of seeing the Northern Lights, and the further north you go, the higher the aurora will be in the sky.

The combination of a high enough Kp, a reasonably accessible location, and relatively short notice are the limiting factors for most people planning to see the Northern Lights. Being flexible and patient is important. Spend some time with the 27 Day Forecast tool before planning anything.

Clear, dark sky

Even if you’ve chosen the best day and location for Northern Lights viewing, you’re still not guaranteed anything. Light pollution will certainly ruin your viewing, but if you’re driving far enough north to view them, odds are the big cities are far behind you. Your bigger problems are clouds and the moon. As your viewing day gets closer, if overcast skies are also forecasted, you may want to reconsider. If a bright moon is expected around the times you intend to view, you may need to reschedule your sleeping plans.

Unobscured view of the horizon

If you go far enough north, this may not be an issue for you since the Northern Lights will appear higher in the sky the further north you go. For us, because they were just above the horizon, even the tree line on the northern end of a smallish lake would have obscured them. Our viewing was at Whitefish Point in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, so we had wide open northern views of the horizon over Lake Superior. There was no light pollution from cities, but we did have the Whitefish Point lighthouse 100′ behind us to contend with, but it wasn’t that bad. (In addition to amazing views of Lake Superior, Whitefish Point is also the location of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, which we highly recommend.)

If you can’t find the southern shore of a great lake, you’ll have to go up. See if you can find a fire tower, a light house, a mountain top, a cottage with two or three stories, etc…..

Plan your trip!

So you’ve found a day with a Kp > 4, you can travel to a reasonably accessible location, the moon won’t be too bright, and the skies are forecasted to be clear…… Schedule that fun little cottage and go!

Evening of the viewing

On the evening of your viewing, Soft Serve News’ Aurora Borealis Forecast offers to-the-minute forecasts. It was very cold and windy when we went, so this tool came in very handy to help us accurately time our trips to the beach without standing in the cold too long. After only a little use, your family will become oddly excited about Kp values greater than 4.

Who knew that space weather could be so exciting?

BONUS: How not to photograph the Northern Lights

This is a picture I took of the Northern Lights using my iPhone 8 and a frozen hand in howling wind:

This is a picture that a different photographer took the same evening using an iPhone 8 and a long-exposure app:

Finally, this is what yet another photographer took using an iPhone 11 and a tripod:

In terms of extremely amateur photography, we were completely unprepared. The only decent pics we got came from two guys who happened to be there with better equipment. (I wish I could credit them, but they’ve become lost to Michigan lore.)

At the end of the day, you’ll need a tripod and a good camera. Long-exposures seem to have some promise in a low-light environment, but you’ll lose the movement. Time-lapses might be a fun alternative, but you’ll also need a great camera to back it up.

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