Guide live
Alaska
Fairbanks sits at the edge of the aurora ring, in Alaska's interior. Best from late February to March.
10-second exposure: brighter than the eye sees
Three questions, answered straight
Where should I go?
In or near the aurora ring
By our calculation from geomagnetic coordinates, Iceland, Tromsø and Abisko sit inside the band where auroras happen even on quiet nights, and Fairbanks sits right at its edge. Rovaniemi sits further south and needs a more active night.
When should I go?
Near the equinoxes
Activity runs higher around March and September. Then clear skies decide: in Fairbanks that puts the best window at late February to March.
How many nights?
Three for even odds
In Fairbanks in February–March, three nights gives about even odds of a proper display, and 8–9 nights about four in five. Cloudy spells come in runs, so leave room.
Where to go
Guide live
Guide live
Iceland
Magnetically deeper inside the ring than Lapland, with a whole holiday's worth of things to do if the sky stays shut.
15-second exposure: much brighter than the eye sees
Coming
Finnish Lapland
Glass igloos, huskies and plenty to do by day. Go north of Rovaniemi for better odds.
10-second exposure: brighter than the eye sees
Tromsø in Norway, Abisko in Sweden and Yellowknife in Canada follow.
Start with these guides
- The best places to see the northern lights: six destinations compared on odds, cost and access.
- The best time to see the northern lights: activity, darkness, cloud and moon, month by month.
- How many nights you need: odds from real night-by-night records.
- Northern lights tours: what each kind of tour gets you, and what the free-retry promises cover.
Why we print shutter speeds under our photos
At night your eyes see mostly in grey. A camera holds its shutter open for seconds and gathers the green that your eye can't. That's why so many people stand under a real display and feel let down. A typical aurora looks pale and silvery to the eye, and vivid on a phone. Strong nights are genuinely green to the eye; weak ones aren't.
So every aurora photo here says how long the shutter was open. Short exposures of a few seconds are close to what you'll see. Twenty seconds is brighter than real life.
How we work
- Every number has a sourceWeather services, the geomagnetic record, operators' own prices. Where a figure is our calculation, we explain it.
- We leave out what we can't verifySome claims get repeated everywhere with no source behind them. They don't go on our pages.
- We don't promise the auroraNobody can. We show the odds, so you can decide how long to stay.