How can i see aurora borealis

Surfing and Northern Lights aren't the most common duo -- but they are on the Lofoten islands, Norway. About a decade ago, the first Lofoten Masters -- dubbed the world's northernmost surfing championship -- took place, attracting only a handful of local surfers. Today the annual event welcomes a host of international surfers keen to brave the icy waves -- and more importantly perhaps, to surf under the Northern Lights.

Open to surfers of all levels, the organizer describes Lofoten Masters as more like a festival than a competition, with facilities such as mobile hot tubs, sauna and food stands. And if you can't make it during the competition, Unstad Arctic Surf school provides surfing courses year-round and beachside accommodation. Lofoten Masters takes place in September Follow the website for updates. Cairngorms National Park, Scotland. Best spot: In your own caravan -- ideally with a cup of tea.

Up in the Scottish Highlands with a vast dark sky and little light pollution, Cairngorms National Park -- the largest national park in Britain -- is one of the best places to see the Northern Lights in the country. To make the experience even better, the Cairngorms is packed with other activities including snowsports, hiking routes and 12 golf courses. It's also home to Britain's only sled dog center and a bridge-based bungee jump.

Go to Visit Cairngorms' website for a range of accommodation and activity options. Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. Best spot: On a dog-sledding expedition. With the only international airport in Greenland, Kangerlussuaq is the gateway to the rest of the country. With an average clear-sky days per year, it's also another top location for aurora hunters. World of Greenland -- Arctic Circle Wogac offers short Northern Lights tours from October to April, but from February to April it also has a three-day dog-sledding expedition to the west coast town of Sisimiut.

Hotel Kangerlussuaq , at the airport, is a convenient place to stay. Keep your curtains open and you may even see the Northern Lights from your room.

The hotel also organizes an ice-cap tour nearby. Yellowknife, Canada. Best spot: On a heated viewing chair. Not only do you have a great chance of seeing the Northern Lights around the city of Yellowknife, but the surroundings -- and seating -- are especially congenial.

A minute drive from the city center, Aurora Village is a teepee campground where you lounge in specially designed, heated viewing chairs, with guides offering background in various languages on the lights.

You'll need your warm seat -- it can hit 40 C below zero here. Aurora Village also has daytime activities such as dogsled riding and snowmobiling. Follow the village's activities on Twitter or visit astronomynorth. Best spot: On the deck of a traditional steamer ship. The Norwegian tourism board recommends a voyage on the Norwegian Coastal Steamer Hurtigruten to see the lights along a fjord. Find more details about the Astronomy Voyage on Hurtigruten 's website.

Abisko, Sweden. Best spot: While tucking into a four-course Swedish dinner. Cloud cover -- the aurora hunter's arch enemy -- shouldn't trouble you around the village of Abisko, in northern Sweden. Aurora Zone's tour there includes a night's stay at an Ice Hotel. Travelers can also spend a night at the Aurora Sky Station , arriving by chair-lift and having a four-course dinner before stepping out to view the Aurora. MORE: 11 best hotels in the middle of nowhere.

Many local people speak English in those regions and there are lots of tours available, assuming that quarantine protocols at the time of your trip permit these activities.

Visit Tromso's northern lights info. Or you could check out a number of dark-sky locations, such as northern Sweden's Abisko National Park. The company Blakley co-founded, Lights Over Lapland , has been offering aurora tours in Abisko since In , the company released footage from a spectacular all-sky aurora during a geomagnetic storm on March Lights over Lapland's Abisko aurora tours.

Iceland is also a good choice, although cloudy skies may make it difficult to catch auroras on any one particular night.

If possible, leave yourself extra time to accommodate inclement weather. Iceland northern lights tours. ViaTour northern lights night tour from Reykjavik. Russia does have a decent swathe of the auroral zone in the northern zones, but such areas are relatively hard to get to and lack the tourism infrastructure most travelers want. You might get lucky and spot auroras while being in a more well-trodden area such as Moscow or St.

Petersburg, given those cities' relatively high latitudes, however. But make sure to stay as far away from light pollution as feasible. There are also plenty of options for good aurora viewing in North America. While far-eastern Canada tends to be cloudy, the shore of the Hudson Bay, the northern Canadian towns of Yellowknife or Whitehouse, or the west coast of Alaska are usually good bets. The city of Fairbanks itself can be a great choice for seeing northern lights without needing to go too far in the wilderness.

Alaska Tours' aurora tours. Northern Tales Yukon aurora tours. Northern Lights Tours. A traveler could also take a train across the auroral zone to the town of Churchill in Manitoba on the western shore of Hudson Bay — an area famous for its polar bear population.

Churchill Arctic Adventures tours. The northern lights result when charged particles streaming from the sun collide with molecules high up in Earth's atmosphere , exciting these molecules and causing them to glow. The different colors of the northern lights come from different molecules: Oxygen emits yellow, green and red light; while nitrogen is responsible for blue and purplish-red hues.

Earth's magnetic-field lines channel these solar particles toward the planet's north and south magnetic poles, which explains why auroras — the aurora borealis and its southern counterpart, the aurora australis — are high-latitude phenomena. Indeed, the aurora borealis is visible most nights, weather permitting, within a band several hundred miles wide that's centered at about 66 degrees north — about the same latitude as the Arctic Circle. This "standard" aurora is generated by the solar wind — the particles streaming constantly from the sun.

But solar storms known as coronal mass ejections CME can ramp up the northern lights considerably and make them visible over much wider areas. However, if you're planning an aurora-viewing trip weeks or months in advance, you can't count on any help from a solar storm and should therefore head to a destination somewhere near the northern ring. Related: The sun's wrath: Worst solar storms in history.

The southern auroral ring lies above Antarctica and is very difficult for skywatchers, or anyone else, to get to. That's why this article focuses on the northern lights — for reasons of practicality, not antipodean antipathy.

Southern Hemisphere dwellers take heart: The aurora australis can sometimes be viewed from New Zealand and Tasmania. There is also a mysterious, aurora-like brightening phenomenon in Earth's atmosphere called "Steve" that isn't attributable to aurora, although scientists aren't sure of its cause. Finnish researchers have also been tracking dune-like shimmering lights that appear to be linked to gravity waves and oxygen atoms. The huge gas giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune each produce their own auroras, due to their magnetic fields and thick atmospheres.

However, the colors of the gases change because of differences in each planet's atmospheres and magnetospheres.