
Why Do the Northern and Southern Lights Differ? - DoreenMichele
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-the-northern-and-southern-lights-differ/
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dylan604
The northern/southern lights are bucket lists items for me. Hope to mark off
the northern lights soon though. Flights to Iceland have gotten pretty
affordable with Wow airlines. I finally saw the southern hemisphere night sky
a year ago and imaged the Large and Small Magellanic clouds. Crossed that item
off the list. Atacama dessert is another item.

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eyjafjallajokul
I would recommend going to Yellowknife in Canada instead. If you stay there 3
nights, you have a 95% chance of seeing it. Plus it’s closer to the magnetic
north, so the lights _always_ pass over regardless of intensity.

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aaronm14
I'd be curious to hear more about this. Is there a certain time of year, is
there a certain area you need to stay, what time of night, etc. Feel free to
shoot me a link if there is already a good resource explaining some of this

The Northern Lights have been on my bucket list as well for quite some time
but have always let the seemingly random chance of actually seeing them
dissuade me from really planning something.

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eyjafjallajokul
I wasn’t able to find a single place that had all of this documented, but
here’s what I know.

* January to March is the best time of the year because the weather is dry and cloudless. * Pick dates where the moon either sets before it gets dark, or when it’s new moon. * Book viewing tours at multiple places. Aurora Village is amazing as it’s on a frozen lake and there’s heated teepees for you to shake the cold off. There are other tours as well which will take you around so you get the opportunity to photograph the Aurora in various backdrops. Best bet is to probably just DuckDuckGo it. * Rent cold weather clothes at Yellowknife. -40 C/F is typical daytime and nighttime temp during the winter.

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supermw
_> Dazzling green and red light displays regularly dance across the night
sky-_

OK I'm going to stop this right here.

The Northern Lights do _not_ dazzle you with the incredible green light
displays you see in pictures. In real life, you might not even realize you are
looking at a Northern Light unless you know what to look for.

The only way the lights appear so vivid is by taking a photo of them with a
camera with a long enough exposure. When I saw the Northern Lights I had
mistaken them for bright clouds illuminated by the moonlight. Only when I took
a photo with my iPhone did I realize they were the Northern Lights.

The fact that I was not made aware of this until I arrived at my final
destination after a journey of thousands of miles across the world has made me
bitter about it.

With such an inaccuracy on the very first line of this article, I can't bring
myself to continue.

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zipwitch
As someone who grew up in Montana and North Dakota and has been an amateur
astronomer from my early teens, I think you're being overly dismissive. Sure,
sometimes and they're more of a faint white glow (which is pretty impressive
just by itself), but in over two decades of semi-dedicated skywatching (before
moving further south), I saw, with nothing but naked eyes, bright green
curtains on multiple occasions, dazzling blue-white pillars all the way up to
the zenith once, and red curtains twice. And that's living between 46 and 48
degrees of longitude where they're not that common.

If you're setting out on a trip to specifically view the aurora borealis,
you'd want to make sure you're viewing from an area with very low light
pollution, make sure you stay dark adapted, and schedule your trip around
solar max. Under those circumstances, and given multiple clear nights, I would
expect the odds would be excellent for seeing some quite breathtaking auroras.

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Jacqued
It's amazing that you can see them so far south in the US. I live at +48°
latitude too and around here it's completely unheard of to see anything of the
Northern lights (even when I used to live in the countryside at ~+50°).

Thanks for the advice.

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BenjiWiebe
In central Kansas, I have seen faint aurora several times in the last 10
years. Nothing bright or fast moving, but if you paid attention and looked
they were definitely aurora. And my Canadian mother also confirmed it.

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iicc
Tangental Prettiness:

ISS Symphony - Timelapse of Earth from International Space Station
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgdbZhnFD5g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgdbZhnFD5g)

