When Do Northern Lights Occur
Sunspot activity follows an 11 year cycle.
When do northern lights occur. Northern lights can be seen in the northern or southern hemisphere in an irregularly shaped oval centred over each magnetic pole. The aurora is a sporadic phenomenon. Scientists have learned that in most instances northern and southern auroras are mirror like images that occur at the same. The lights are known as aurora borealis in the north and aurora australis in the south.
Many different colors the color of the light released depends on the kind of gas molecules their electrical state at the time of collision and the type of the solar wind particles they collide with. How the aurora borealis occur. The northern lights are caused by the interaction of the solar wind a stream of charged particles escaping the sun and our planet s magnetic. They are visible from late august to early april anytime during dark hours which in places like abisko or tromsø can be nearly 24 hours a day in winter.
However the light of the sun is far too overwhelming for them to be seen during the day. Photos don t do the northern lights justice. In order to see the northern lights you need a dark clear night. Considering iceland has the midnight sun throughout much of june and july and may and august are notably bright the best time to see the auroras here is between september and april.
The northern lights are unpredictable. The auroras generally occur along the auroral ovals which center on the magnetic poles not the geographic poles and roughly correspond with the arctic and antarctic circles. Auroral light displays tend to occur at between 50 miles 80 46 kilometers and 200 miles 321 87 kilometers above the surface of the earth. The northern lights are often referred to as night aurora because they occur on the night side of the earth and they commonly appear in the early evening and continue late into the night.
The northern lights occur throughout the year. Auroras or aurorae sometimes referred to as polar lights aurora polaris northern lights aurora borealis or southern lights aurora australis is a natural light display in the earth s sky predominantly seen in high latitude regions around the arctic and antarctic. Although this is the most usual form of aurora during winter on spitzbergen where it is dark even at midday it is possible to observe the rarer day.