Can I See the Northern Lights From Here?

How the Kp you need is worked out

The aurora forms in a ring around each geomagnetic pole, the auroral oval. NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center gives the rule the tool uses in its tips on viewing the aurora. At Kp 0 the equatorward edge of the oval is at about 66 degrees geomagnetic latitude, and it moves about 2 degrees toward the equator for each step of Kp. That puts it at 64 degrees at Kp 1 and 62 at Kp 2, down to 48 degrees at Kp 9. If the edge reaches your geomagnetic latitude, the aurora can be overhead or close to it. That is the big number in the tool.

You can also see the aurora a long way off, low in the sky toward the pole. For storm levels, NOAA's Space Weather Scales say where it "has been seen as low as". That is about 55 degrees geomagnetic at G2 (Kp 6), 50 at G3 (Kp 7), 45 at G4 (Kp 8) and 40 at G5 (Kp 9). The tool uses those lines for the "low in the sky" answer. It holds the G2 line to the oval rule's 54 degrees so the two never disagree. Below Kp 6, NOAA's scale gives no line, so the tool claims nothing beyond the oval's edge. That is the cautious side. NOAA itself says that from a hilltop with a clear view north you can see aurora up to 1,000 km (600 miles) away, so on a good night you may catch it at a lower Kp than the tool says.

NOAA adds that the relationship between Kp and auroral latitude is approximate, an average that will not hold every night. Treat the number as where to start, not a promise.

Why geomagnetic latitude, not the map's

The oval is centred on the geomagnetic pole, not the geographic one. NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information put the geomagnetic north pole at 80.85°N, 72.76°W for 2025, from the World Magnetic Model. That is in the Canadian Arctic, so North America sits several degrees closer to it than Europe at the same map latitude. The tool measures your distance from that pole. Minneapolis, at 45°N on the map, is about 53° geomagnetic, the same as London at 51.5°N. NCEI adds that the bands of greatest activity lie 15 to 25 degrees from the geomagnetic pole, which is 65 to 75 degrees geomagnetic. Places further in than that, like Svalbard, often have the aurora to the south of them.

The tool uses the simple dipole, the geomagnetic coordinates NCEI describes. Scientists also use corrected coordinates that follow the real field more closely, and the two can differ by a few degrees in places, so a borderline answer can go either way.

It has to be dark, and late is better

NOAA is plain about this: it must be dark. It notes that the high latitudes where the aurora happens are also where it does not get dark in summer, so a summer trip to the Arctic usually does not work for aurora. The tool counts the hours with the sun more than 12 degrees below the horizon as dark. That is the end of nautical twilight, the point the US Naval Observatory describes as the horizon still just visible on a moonless night. It also shows the sun 18 degrees down, astronomical twilight, after which scattered sunlight is less than starlight. The chart under the tool is the 12-degree count on the 15th of each month. A month with no bar is a month the aurora is invisible however strong it is.

NOAA says the best aurora is usually within an hour or two of midnight, between 10 pm and 2 am local time, and that these hours widen into the evening and morning as activity rises. The tool's "dark in the best hours" row is how much of that window is dark. NOAA also notes a tendency toward larger storms near the spring and fall equinoxes, though the dark hours shrink fast after the spring equinox and grow fast after the fall one. The autumn window is what this year's best aurora window is about.

The moon matters too. NOAA says a full moon diminishes the apparent brightness of the aurora, though not its actual brightness. The tool shows the moon's phase and how much of it is lit at midnight. It does not work out whether the moon is up, so a bright moon that sets early may not matter.

What the tool says for well-known places

The tool's own output for 2026. "Dark" is hours with the sun 12 degrees or more below the horizon on the night of 15 December. The last column is the months with no dark sky at all on the 15th.

The far-north towns are under the oval on a quiet night, which is why NOAA says that in the right place even Kp 3 or 4 gives very nice displays. There, the weather and the dark months decide your trip, not the Kp. Further south it flips: London, Seattle and Minneapolis have dark nights all year and need a storm. NOAA's scales count about 130 days at G3 (Kp 7) in an average 11-year solar cycle.

Reading the forecast

The button under the tool fetches NOAA's own planetary K-index forecast, in three-hour blocks, and marks the ones that reach your place. Nothing is sent to us and nothing is fetched until you press it. A predicted Kp is a forecast, and it can change within hours. How to read an aurora forecast goes through the numbers in more depth, the Fairbanks forecast covers the University of Alaska's version, and the best aurora forecast apps compares the apps that send an alert.

When the night comes, plan for the cold as much as the sky. How cold it gets during the northern lights gives the temperatures, and the wind chill and frostbite calculator shows what the wind does to them. For the photographs, the camera settings calculator and aurora photography for beginners have the settings. For booking a northern Norway trip, see Tromsø and Alta this season.

A guide to where and when the aurora can reach, not a forecast of it. The Kp to latitude rules are NOAA's averages, and clouds, light pollution and the view toward the pole decide the rest.
Sources: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, Tips on Viewing the Aurora, NOAA Space Weather Scales and the Planetary K-index forecast; NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Geomagnetic Poles (WMM2025); US Naval Observatory, Rise, Set, and Twilight Definitions; the sun's position from NOAA's solar calculator equations; the moon's phase from Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms (2nd ed., 1998), chapter 48; place coordinates from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0).