[home] -- last updated: 2018-11-06, 1523 UTC

Entry points for studying the Northern Lights

If you want to learn about the northern lights, what they are and how research related to them is done today, this page will give you some references and links, which help you to get started. In addition, you could try to use the computers of your local library to search for literature related to "space", "northern lights", "polar lights", "aurora", "aurora borealis", "aurora australis".

Note that we are unable to answer general questions such as "What is the aurora?", "How, why and where is it?", "How is the atmosphere structured?" etc. We simply get too many such questions and we do not have time to provide answers, which can be found in most libraries and on-line. Please refer to text books and internet sources as well as the scientific literature. However, if you have detailed, specific questions, you are welcome to ask us.

Watching the Northern Lights

• Viewing the Northern Lights in the UK, British Geological Survey, U.K.
• Tips on viewing the aurora, Space Weather Prediction Center, NOAA, USA.
• The Northern Lights - where, when and what by Truls Lynne Hansen, University of Tromsø, Norway.
• Aurora forecast and related information, Geophysical Institute, U Alaska Fairbanks, USA.

Alert Services

• @BGSauroraAlert: Occasional aurora alerts from the British Geological Survey, Edinburgh, U.K. (see also www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk)
• @BGSspaceWeather: Daily 24-hr forecasts of global geomagnetic activity from the British Geological Survey, Edinburgh, U.K. (see also www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk)
• @aurorawatchuk: Receive email alerts when the aurora may be visible from the UK! A service provided by Space Physicists at Lancaster University, U.K. (see also aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk )
• Presto Alert of the Solar Influences Data Analysis Center (SIDC), Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium.

Literature

The Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks has made an excellent aurora bibliography available on-line.

• Eather, Robert, Majestic Lights; the aurora in science, history and arts, American Geophysical Union, Washington, USA, 1980.
• Bone, Neil, The Aurora: Sun-Earth Interactions, John Wiley & Sons Inc, USA, 1996.
• Davis, Neil, Aurora Watchers Handbook, University of Alaska Press, USA, 1992.
• Hargreaves, John K., The Solar-Terrestrial Environment, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 1992.

Inernet Resources

• Aurora by the Space Weather Prediction Service, NOAA, USA.
• aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk

Scientific literature

• Eddy, John A, The Maunder Minimum, Science, 192, 1189-1202, 1976.