Your Guide To When, Where and How To See The Aurora Borealis

universetoday.com ^ | August 26, 2013 | by Bob King on

[BenLurkin]

As for place, Churchill, Manitoba and Tromso, Norway come to mind, but until the transporter is invented, most of will be staying closer to home. The simple answer is north and the farther north the better. In the northern border states of the US, auroras occur fairly regularly around the time of solar maximum, when the sun peaks in storm activity. The current solar cycle tops out this summer and fall, so your chances at seeing northern lights are far better now than a year and a half ago when solar activity saw a steep decline during a protracted minimum.

[mfish13]

Saw it a few years ago in Dike, Texas, and it was Blood Red.

[norwaypinesavage]

In high school, in northern Minnesota, in about 1960, I participated in an aurora sighting study. We were told to note position, time, and colors. We were told auroras were hitting about every three days.

However, half the time it would be daylight, and another half would be cloudy, so we could only expect to see them about once every two weeks. That's about the rate we saw them. Of course, kids would call each other when auroras were visible.

[BenLurkin]

The only time I’ve ever seen it, it was red.

Was listening to Art Bell when he said he was seeing it from Pahrump, so I got out of bed and went outside. It was a dusky red glow in the sky.

[familyop]

"...so your chances at seeing northern lights are far better now than a year and a half ago when solar activity saw a steep decline during a protracted minimum."

That's pretty funny. Activity has been much lower in this maximum than the last and lower in the last before that one. We're in an extended minimum with activity continuing to decline.

"...but Denver’s in a much better location for an occasional auroral visit because the magnetic pole resides in Canada on the “North American side” of the globe."

Did the author run away from a group home? The magnetic pole is on the other side, in or very near Russia.

[familyop]

The north magnetic pole was still in the Canadian Arctic claim in 2009 but barely (84.9°N 131.0°W)--very close to the edge of that area. It was projected to be outside of that claim by sometime in 2012 (map, etc.).

[CrazyIvan]

“Saw it a few years ago in Dike, Texas, and it was Blood Red.”

Same thing here in Ill. Looked like a beautiful scarlet curtain.

[familyop]

WDC for GeoMag, Kyoto (magnetic pole position prediction through 2015 with map)
http://wdc.kugi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/poles/polesexp.html

...and a dataset to compare.

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/data/poles/NP.xy

[Wildbill22]

Pretty common for pilots to see around the maximum, especially when flying around the 45th parallel and north.

I have seen them a few times, the most dramatic was a display that went from north, to overhead, to the south about 2/3 of the total sky, moving green and blue and reddish fingers. I was at 34,000 over northern North Dakota.