Okay, enough boring sciency bits – lets’ get to the juicy stuff – where should you travel to so you can actually get to see the Northern Lights? The best time of the year to go is September till April! This is not to say it doesn’t occur outside of these months, it’s just that the destinations that are great for seeing the Northern Lights are also the ones that get the midnight sun in summer so it’s impossible to see them even when they occur in the summer months. When Should You Go To See The Northern Lights? (Though the lights down South – in places like New Zealand – are called the “Southern Lights” not the “Northern Lights” for fairly obvious reasons and can usually be seen closer to the horizon instead of high in the skies like the Northern Lights). Just kidding! The reason is simple enough – those solar charged particles are usually deflected by the earth’s magnetic field but the magnetic field is weakest at the North and South poles of the earth so these particles can enter the atmosphere a lot easier at these points. Why does this happen at really high places in the world? Don’t ask – we’ll be here all evening if I tried to tackle that one. Oxygen (the more common one) is usually green or orange/red and Nitrogen is usually blue or red. The colour you see, depends on the elements in the atmosphere involved in this reaction. The charge these particles from the sun ‘ lose‘ □, is transferred to the particles in the earth’s atmosphere which emit a light due to their new-found charge.Įffectively, the sun transfers power from itself to the earth to create the Northern Lights. Now, energy can neither be created nor destroyed rather, it transforms from one form to another (one of the most basic facts of physics I still remember from school). Once these particles hit earth’s atmosphere (the earth has 5 atmospheric layers), the particles lose their charge. See, around the sun, you have charged-particles (yes, I guess charged in the same way electricity charges stuff – these particles actually carry energy) said particles, due to their new-found ‘energy’ can escape the gravity of the sun and head towards earth (also called ‘solar wind’). The best explanation I can give you is that it has to do with activity from the sun. Glaciers that are thousands of years old, dramatic mountains carved by said glaciers, wildlife that’s unlike anywhere else in the world, the seemingly contradictory mix of volcano and snow… I really could go on and on – point is, the Northern Lights are usually found in some of the most stunning destinations in the world! How Are The Northern Lights Formed? The Northern Lights, also called the Aurora Borealis, are perhaps almost single-handedly to blame for my obsession with visiting cold countries.ĭon’t get me wrong, coming from the UK, where it’s never really cold enough and never really hot enough (not for too long anyway), the scenery in so many cold destinations is nothing short of mind-boggling.
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