Best way of seeing northern lights?

[Glade]

Would like to go for a weekend, or 4 nights in Oct.

Any tips?

[phumy]

Tip one:

You can never guarantee to see them on any particular night, its down to atmospheric conditions.


Try google

[smifffymoto]

Saariselka or Levi in Finland,way past the arctic circle.the only thing you need to see the northern lights is the right weather conditions and a lot of patience.I was lucky enough to see them and they really are worth the wait.good luck

[XJSJohn]

smifffymoto said:

Saariselka or Levi in Finland,way past the arctic circle.the only thing you need to see the northern lights is the right weather conditions and a lot of patience.I was lucky enough to see them and they really are worth the wait.good luck

yup ... Tromso is not a bad place for seeing the Aurora too.

http://www.scantours.co.uk/winter/nlights.shtml

http://www.fjordtravel.no/tours/citybreaks/norwegi...

[hugo a gogo]

Blackpool

[Glade]

We're now thinking of going skiing in northern Sweden or Finland and hope to see them. kind of a 2-in-1 holiday. That way of the weather isn't right we haven't missed out on the whole point of the holiday!

At the moment Yllas in Finland looks reasonable. (Mrs is a novice skiier)

As for whoever amusingly suggested google - as usual the good advice is mixed in with hundreds of poorly designed travel company websites, and pages flooded with generic key words, and no decent content.... so thanks for that .

[Puggit]

Iceland could be a bargain since their economy collapsed? I haven't looked in to it, but that's where I'm considering going!

[oyster]

Obviously winter is much better. And get plenty north - Iceland isn't always best.

And set aside a week or so in case of differing atmospheric and cloud conditions.

[grumbledoak]

Way North in Norway, and November, apparently. But there are no guarantees, little else to do, and the booze is expensive!

I still want to do it. More interesting than any beach holiday. Good luck.

[phumy]

oyster said:

Obviously winter is much better. And get plenty north - Iceland isn't always best.

And set aside a week or so in case of differing atmospheric and cloud conditions.

And why is winter (obviously) much better? In fact the nearer you get to the pole the more chance you have of seeing this.

[XJSJohn]

phumy said:

oyster said:

Obviously winter is much better. And get plenty north - Iceland isn't always best.

And set aside a week or so in case of differing atmospheric and cloud conditions.

And why is winter (obviously) much better? In fact the nearer you get to the pole the more chance you have of seeing this.

It looks better in the dark (assuming that the crappy winter weather has not obscured everything with clouds and rain)

[oyster]

phumy said:

oyster said:

Obviously winter is much better. And get plenty north - Iceland isn't always best.

And set aside a week or so in case of differing atmospheric and cloud conditions.

And why is winter (obviously) much better? In fact the nearer you get to the pole the more chance you have of seeing this.

Surely seeing the aurora is easier in the dark, and there isn't a lot of dark in the summer.

[shakotan]

We saw them in Kiruna during the New Year's Holiday we had there.

Just a very gradual appearance of some feint green 'clouds' in the sky, lasted about half an hour.

[uuf361]

Alaska was great for seeing the Northern Lights, just had to get out of Anchorage a little at night and it was truly amazing

[phumy]

oyster said:

phumy said:

oyster said:

Obviously winter is much better. And get plenty north - Iceland isn't always best.

And set aside a week or so in case of differing atmospheric and cloud conditions.

And why is winter (obviously) much better? In fact the nearer you get to the pole the more chance you have of seeing this.

Surely seeing the aurora is easier in the dark, and there isn't a lot of dark in the summer.

Ok point taken, however its not only Winter that it gets dark, it still happens in Spring and Autumn (pendantic tt that i am ;-)) as i have been lucky enough to have witnessed this phenomenom myself in February in the Southern Ocean whilst doing a yacht race (another story) this happened on three consecutive nights, dark ones too. Febuary in the Southern Ocean is not really classed as winter its probably Autumn but it was mighty dark and the light shows lasted for around 20 to 30 minutes, just before midnight on each occasion. If i remenber correctly at that time of the year and i was probably somewhere around 60 to 65 deg South, which is pretty deep into ice territory.