Northern Lights
From a NASA space shuttle the Northern Lights appear like emerald green halos circumscribing both magnetic poles. From the earth's surface variously like shards of spectrum coloured light jaggedly pointing down from the sky; trailing ribbons of green light making a stellar pathway to a single point on the distant horizon; swirling concentric circles; or ribboned drapes hanging from an invisible curtain rod above the stars.
Most commonly visible colours are blue or green at altitudes between 100km to 200km, red at higher ones and crimson lower down. They can creep up slowly from the horizon like skeletal claws or dance across the night sky at, literally of course, the speed of light. Sometimes they open like time lapse flower photography, and others flutter like an ensign in the wind or pile up as if in the hands of a cosmic juggler. Of course you can ignore all this prose as it's truly the case of a picture being worth a thousand words.
WHERE CAN YOU SEE THE NORTHERN LIGHTS
Generally anywhere within a 10 degree latitudinal arc along the Arctic Circle (rather more below than above) although during geomagnetic storms the arc of visibility expands which accounts for tales of people having seen them in Bradford!! For the traveller this means that Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish Lapland all have spots from which to see them as does Iceland. Most importantly the thing to bear in mind is visibility is in the hands of the Gods or more prosaically dependent on cloud cover, so don't try an box clever with lunar charts, long term isobar charts or sun spot activity predictions.
Decide what sort of holiday you'll enjoy the most: urban city break, 'sleeping on ice' weekend, activity tour and then let us guide you through our options.
Tromso in Norway and Iceland's Reykjavik are great locations for an urban city break with all sorts of snow safaris and excursions on the side; in Finnish Lapland we work only with artisan suppliers who love what they do and lay on husky mushing, snowmobiling and reindeer safaris in wilderness terrain untouched for thousands of years.
