As beautiful as they are, with auroras, you can have too much of a good thing.
Back in 1859, the Sun had a total spazz. What today is called the Carrington Event was an aurora that literally covered the globe. From Norway to the Amazon, from Antarctica to Papua New Guinea, the nighttime sky was ablaze. It was so stupendous that on mountains high enough in the Andes you could see auroras in the northern and southern hemispheres at the same time. That may sound very beautiful, but it also knocked out almost every telegraph system on the planet. If we had the Carrington Event today, it would mean an Earth-wide blackout.
This coming aurora season probably isn’t going to be that dramatic, but thanks to the cyclical nature of the Sun’s magnetic whatsits, 2015 is promising to be a showstopper nevertheless.
Northern Lights travel expert Jonny Cooper, Director of Off the Map Travel, explains: “All of the data we’ve seen suggests that this could be the most active start to any Northern Lights season we have had this solar cycle. This is great news for aurora hunters.”
But auroras are fickle by nature. Kiss that Instagram moment good-by if everything comes into sync while the sun is still in the sky.
Cooper admits as much, “The ability to forecast solar activity, and therefore displays of the Northern Lights, is however not an exact science, with many of the recent events taking experts the world over by surprise, making it impossible to estimate how this will develop for the rest of the aurora season.”
The best aurora-hunters can do is tip the scales in their favor as much as human endevour allows. This means booking a trip to the “Aurora Oval,” a blob of Arctic territory including the northern tips Norway, Sweden, and Finland, plus Canada, Siberia, Alaska, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Iceland. Of them all, I recommend an HQ in Tromso, Norway. It’s north enough to guarantee a good sky-show, but developed enough that you can dash inside and thaw in 5-star comfort once you’ve reached your limit.
And if you are one of those more butch types, wildly underrated Greenland if for you. The capital of Nuuk is so small there is hardly any light pollution to foul up the night sky. It’s also as pristine a country can get and still have people in it, with some of the “best skies” in the hemisphere. If there is even a slight aurora season, Greenland will see every last photon.
For more information, go to ilovenorthernlights.com, visittromso.no/en, and greenland.com/en for more info. Contact Steele Luxury Travel for assistance with all of your traveling planning to Aurora and beyond! https://steeletravel.com