Where to See the Aurora: 6 Countries Compared

Whether you see the aurora is not decided by the name of the country. It is decided by

whether you are under the auroral oval. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center explains

that the oval’s southern boundary moves roughly two degrees towards the equator for every

step of the Kp index: from geomagnetic latitude 66° at Kp 0 down to 48° at Kp 9. There is

one thing easily missed in that sentence. Those 66 degrees are geomagnetic latitude, not

the latitude you read off a map. That is exactly why Yellowknife in Canada, at 62.45 °N

and well south of Rovaniemi, is still called an aurora city.

So instead of introducing one country at a time, this article puts six of them on the same

yardstick: latitude, the season each national tourism body or weather institute states

officially, the sighting frequency actually published in official material, how you get

there, and the nightly accommodation range.

One disclosure first. We are a team covering Finnish Lapland, so the only accommodation

rates we have verified ourselves are the Finnish ones. The price cells for the other five

countries are left empty. Copying a number out of a search result would be easy enough,

but a number we cannot attach a source and a date to is better left out. Every latitude

and season in the tables comes from that country’s tourism board, weather institute or

research station, and the sources are listed at the end.

What the aurora needs: the oval, latitude, and cloud

Three conditions have to hold when you look up, and missing one makes the other two irrelevant.

Be under the oval. NOAA is explicit that the oval’s position is set by

geomagnetic latitude, not geographic latitude. Two places at the same latitude on the map

can see the aurora at very different rates.

Darkness. NOAA advises that the aurora is usually best within an hour or

two of local midnight, roughly 22:00 to 02:00. A full moon and city lights wash it out.

An open sky. In practice this is the one that ruins trips. However high

your latitude, Kp 7 is worth nothing under cloud.

Because of the third condition, “furthest north” does not become “most visible”. In the

table below, Abisko in Sweden and Tromsø in Norway are less than one degree of latitude

apart. What separates them is not latitude. It is cloud.

The furthest north is not automatically the most visible.

Table 1: latitude, season and published sighting frequency

Above the Arctic Circle at 66°33′45.9″N; Ivalo airport 68.61 °N

About 200 nights a year in northern Finland

Up to 240 nights a year in the Northwest Territories

Four nights in five when the sky is clear and dark

“No published figure” does not mean the aurora is seen less often there. It means that

tourism body has not put a number of nights per year in writing. Three of the six have;

Table 2: getting there and the nightly accommodation range

Helsinki is the hub; domestic flights connect on to Rovaniemi, Kittilä and Ivalo

Glass igloo €480–1,350 · cabins across Lapland €75–700