Winter and springtime are generally less cloudy than autumn in and around the northern auroral zone, so planning a trip between December and April makes sense. You also need clear, dark skies, emphasizes Charles Deehr, a professor emeritus and aurora forecaster at the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute, whose guide to aurora viewing has lots of great information. When the sun shoots these geysers of plasma in the direction of Earth, wonderful auroras can be expected.īut it's not just the solar weather forecast you need to monitor to have the aurora experience of a lifetime. Coronal mass ejections are the most powerful source of charged particles emitted from the corona, the sun's upper atmosphere. The good news is that the sun's 11-year cycle of activity is picking up and we will see more sun spots, flares and coronal mass ejections going forward than in the previous years. You need darkness to see the northern lights, and places in the auroral zone have precious little of it during the summer months. If you're planning an aurora-viewing trip, try not to schedule it in the middle of summer. The northern lights are more formally known as the aurora borealis, and are caused by interactions between the solar wind, which is the stream of charged particles emanating from the sun, and the Earth's magnetic field.

Related: Aurora myths, legends and misconceptions When to see the Northern Lights We have also rounded up some of the best northern lights webcams so you can sit back, relax, and look out for the aurora borealis from the comfort of your own home. For example, the summer may be a good time for a vacation, but a better time to see auroras is actually between winter and spring.

But you need to know when and where to go. For best results, you can blaze your own trail somewhere along the 'auroral zone' that encircles Earth's northern reaches.

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