How to watch
Earth's longitude rotates deeper into the oval once every 24 hours; in the case of Finland this rotation means the best time for viewing the Northern Lights is around 10.30 in the evening (Standard Time). On the other hand, it is always worth bearing in mind that a solar storm can appear at any time of the day or night, and hunters of spectacular shows would therefore be well advised to concentrate on following the various types of forecasts and predictions which are published on the Internet.

A natural place to begin scanning for predictions of the Northern Lights is the website Today's Space Weather, which provides an estimate in easily understood layman's language of the situation over the next three days. Another site, SpaceWeather.com, which is aimed specifically at the general public and provides an 		excellent commentary on near space phenomena, includes precise details of predicted sightings of the Northern Lights. Real-time information on disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field, which are caused specifically by the aurora, is provided by the Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory Magnetogram. If the curves depicting the disturbances exhibit a sudden fluctuation of 1000nT (a smaller fluctuation will often be enough), the Northern Lights will probably be visible at that moment as far south as southern Finland. The best and most reliable prediction of all, however, is turning out to be the latest activity index prediction derived from the measurements taken by the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) satellite used in sensing the solar wind between the sun and the Earth. Its prediction Latest output (1 day) shows the predicted auroral situation 35-70
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Written for Virtual Finland by
Joe Brady and Jyrki Manninen Ph.D.

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