When The Green Lady Played Cupid - Aurora Chronicles Part II
12:45 AM
Choosing a life partner in arrange marriage is like playing blind and all you get are a couple of ‘meetings’ to decide who you’ll be spending your life with. Nervously taking a sip of the hot chocolate placed in front of me, I was mentally checking off all the things we had in common. And the ones we didn’t. In the last one hour that we were talking, I had about 18 things we had in common and with him ordering a cheesy mushroom side-dish, I got the 18th thing that we didn’t have in common. Our love, or the lack thereof for mushrooms. Now, totally confused if we were meant to be together, I was looking for things that would be the deal-breaker. Or, deal-maker.
“What is the one place you want to absolutely travel to?” I asked to know if he’s a beach person or a mountain one.
“Actually, there are many places I absolutely want to visit, but if you ask me to choose one, it’d have to be the Aurora Borealis” he said, digging into the mushrooms and went on talking about the place very passionately. And on hearing ‘Aurora Borealis’, I tore up the mental leaderboard I had been maintaining.
The probability of finding a Gujju guy who’s passionate about going to see the Aurora Borealis is like having the any auto-wallah agree to take your short-distance fare during peak-hour rush. AND, finding a Gujju guy, in an arrange marriage setting who’s passionate about going to see the Aurora Borealis is like having the first auto-wallah you approach agree to take your short-distance fare during peak-hour rush!
So with Aurora Borealis acting as Cupid, I started my journey with my husband, a journey that started many mini journeys along with it. The most recent being the one where we did go and see the Aurora Borealis.
Unlike other travel trips, Northern Lights trips require a lot more strategy and planning , hence, coming up ahead in my Aurora Chronicles is all the basic information about the Northern Lights that you will need to know before you plan your Northern Lights trip.
What
is the Aurora Borealis – Yes, we know it’s the green lights happening in the
sky, but what and how does it really happen?
After reading a lot of physicsish
articles, but eventually giving up and settling for the explanation on a random
Google website, the Northern Lights are actually the result of collisions
between gaseous particles in the Earth's atmosphere with charged particles
released from the sun's atmosphere. So, the beauty that we see is because some
awesome physics happening over Earth’s atmosphere with the solar wind.
BTW, ‘Aurora’ gets her named after the
Roman Goddess of dawn.
Best
time to see the Lights
I don’t know. For that matter, no one
can conclusively know! As a naturally occurring phenomenon, the appearance of
the Northern Lights is notoriously difficult to predict any further in advance
than about two hours before it happens. But roughly, October – March are the
months when you have higher chances of seeing it.
You need dark skies (long nights),
clear, cloudless skies to see the Lights. It need not be cold. Cold is
incidental as winters at the poles have nights lasting more than 18-20 hours a
day.
Jan –
Mar: The most popular months to see the Lights. You have long nights, and the
sun, too is making a comeback by reappearing above the horizon, so you won’t get
depressed with the endless nights.
Apr –
Aug: Summer months, hardly any night time. Lights happen, but aren’t visible
as there’s hardly dark skies that lasts long enough for one to spot it.
Sept
– Oct: This is the time when the nights start getting longer. If you want to
beat the Arctic cold, this is the time you can go. The chances are still lesser
compared to a Winter Night.
Nov –
Dec: The onset of winter and endless nights gives ample opportunity to spot
the Lights.
End March and end October may witness
good displays as due to the Equinoxes, solar activity increases, but the nights
aren’t as long as in Winters.
Also, try to time your trip around New
Moon as some say the moonlight may cause light pollution, spoiling the show.
However, some also feel the moon adds to the pictures you may click, though I haven’t
come across an Aurora pic with a full moon. We preferred the New Moon week, as we
didn’t want to take any chances.
The Auroral Show
Since this is a completely natural
phenomenon dependent on solar winds, cloudless, dark skies, there’s no
predicting if there may or may not be a display on a particular day in advance. There are a few websites that
predict 3 days in advance and are quite reliable, however the best predictions happen only 3-4 hours prior. So, your entire trip is based
is another game played blind. Just like arranged marriages :P
There’s also no telling if you get to
see a show, how long it would last or what colors you would get to see. If you’re
visiting during a Solar Maximum or a Solar Storm, you may witness shows that may
go on for hours and have varied colors. Otherwise, the shows vary from a few
minutes to a few hours. They may happen once or more than once on a night.
There’s really no telling/predicting. All you have to do is stay awake, drink
hot chocolate and pray to the Roman Goddess!
The Kp Index
We are humans and we don’t deal well
with unpredictability. Hence, man has come up with a metric called the ‘Kp
Index’ which is just a scale measuring geomagnetic activity. The Kp numbers
start at 0 and as the geomagnetic (aurora) strength increases, so too does the
Kp number. So Kp 0 being a very weak or non-existent aurora, right through to 9
being a major geomagnetic storm. A Kp index of more than 3 can mean some kind
of a show. The SWPC
Website gives a fairly accurate prediction for 3 days.
The Aurora
Colors
Solar Cycle & why should you care
The sun goes through phases of
activity, we call these phases – solar cycles. Each solar cycle last’s about 11
years, and each solar cycle has a very quiet part, and a very active part –
Solar Maximum. It is during the Solar Maximum that the highly active sun emits
out a lot of solar wind and solar particles in space. Due to the higher
proportion of solar particles, the chances of a brighter, more colorful, more
intense and a longish auroral display exists. So, try going around a solar
maximum to witness a breath-taking show. Apart from solar maximum offering the
best displays, there can be sudden, unpredictable solar storms which can cause
as magnificent displays as well. But the number of these random solar storms
have been on the decline. But fret not, if you are monitoring for a solar storm
and find one happening, and can reach Norway in 28 days, you may see the Lights
caused by the aforementioned storm. This is because of sun’s rotation on its
own axis, which is a 25-28 day cycle, and the sunspot flaring the storm will be
in alignment with Earth just like it was 28 days back.
We are currently in Solar Cycle 24 which
started around 2010-11 and peaked in 2013. It has already been reported that
the solar activity has been declining and the 2016 auroral displays will be way
lesser than the 2015 ones. Next solar cycle starts in 2020, with a peak around
2025. (This may change as these are still ‘estimates’, you’ll have to keep
following astrophysicists for more accurate information.)
Coming to the next most important question: Where to see the Northern Lights from?
Since the Lights actually happen high
up above the surface of Earth, you actually see the same display from anywhere
on the same hemisphere. You can see it in Russia (Siberia), Alaska (Fairbanks),
Canada (Yellowknife, Yukon etc), Norway (Tromso, Lofoten, Svalbard etc), Sweden
(Abisko), Iceland, Finland, Greenland. Hence for deciding a place, keep the
following things in mind.
- Place should be in the Auroral Oval – the huge ring around both the poles where the Lights may manifest. Roughly around 650 North and further up.
- Place shouldn’t be prone to getting cloudy
- Place shouldn’t have any light pollution. Though you may be put up in a city, you will have to drive out of town to minimize light pollution.
- If you are in the Auroral Oval for a long time, change your places to get different landscapes for your pictures.
- The place should have other activities to do during the day and also at night in case you don’t get to see the lights. (You can do skiing, snow-mobiling, whale watching etc)
- And, most importantly, the place should be easily accessible. You don’t want to freeze to death lest some accident happen or pay through your nose to just reach there. This rules out a lot of places and helps narrow your list.
Also, what is advisable is to book
tours with professional Northern Lights chasing companies. They know the best
spots to chase the lights, take beautiful pictures and switch locations if need
be. Apart from this, driving in snow is tough and since you need to get out of
the city, trusting the experts is the safe bet.
Photo Credits: Karan Mehta.
PS 1: I never thought I would ever write
about Physics on my blog, but here I am! I hope I have got the concepts right
myself. If not, fret not, they maybe true in some other parallel universe. Take
that, physicists!
PS 2: You can refer to the following
links for further reading
PS 3: For more pictures of our trip, ollow us on Instagram -
@nupurbhayani, @tejaldaftary, @karanmehta97
PS 4: In the posts to follow, I'll write about our personal experiences as we went from booking to finally experiencing the fantastic show. Keep Reading :)
PS 4: In the posts to follow, I'll write about our personal experiences as we went from booking to finally experiencing the fantastic show. Keep Reading :)
With the Aurora Cupid above us :)
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