Should you go on an aurora cruise? It’s the best time in over a decade to catch the northern lights

The first “wow” moment of my aurora cruise came when we were 71º North in the Barents Sea off Norway. A greenish curtain weaved across the sky, winding around the stars of Cassiopeia. A sea of smartphones lifted, and seconds later, smiles followed. 

It is a boom time for the aurora. The Sun undergoes an 11-year cycle of rising and falling solar activity – the solar cycle. The Sun is now at what astronomers call the solar maximum, when the geomagnetic storms which give rise to the aurora are more likely.

This means 2025 and 2026 are the best time to hunt the northern lights in over a decade.

As interest in the northern lights increases, cruise companies are making traveling to the Arctic Circle – one of the best places to see the lights – even easier. I sailed onboard Hurtigruten's MS Nordkapp, traversing the Norwegian coast on its regular 11-night route from Bergen to Kirkenes and back.

It called in at remote fishing villages, delivering parcels and picking up supplies, and occasionally dropping off passengers to go dog-sledding or snowmobiling or attend a Viking-themed dinner.

The first few days were taken up for astronomy lectures, and there was plenty of time to sample locally sourced ingredients from the land the ship was constantly passing.

The entire ship was treated to blue mussels grown off Trondheim, while some sampled bottles of sparkling wine aged for six months in the Norwegian Sea.

This being Norway, there was always beautifully cooked cod on hand – there was even some cod-flavoured ice cream.

As aurora hunts go, this was as relaxing as it gets.  

Avoiding the weather with an aurora cruise

The regular nightly excursion, however, was to the seventh deck to check on the status of the aurora. Or rather, the weather.

“Seeing the aurora from the ground is fantastic, but if you want to be on the move, constantly moving into better skies… then I think being on a ship sailing into the Arctic is a special way to do it,” says Tom Kerss, author of Northern Lights: The definitive guide to auroras and the cruise’s Chief Aurora Hunter, who conducts lectures and workshops on astronomy-themed cruises.

Kerss – who spends each cruise lecturing on everything from stargazing in polar regions to aurora on other planets – takes time out to help passengers set up their cameras and give advice on how exactly to take images on a moving ship, which frequently has to negotiate rough seas. 

You do need sea legs for a Northern Lights cruise. On a couple of occasions, there were six-metre waves, which left passengers scurrying for their cabins to wait it out.

However, the beauty of a coastal cruise is that the ship very often travels through narrow fjords and channels where calm waters are assured. Not only was the majority of the journey smooth, but the weather was ever-changing. Even with a storm system in effect, plenty of gaps in the weather belied the regional forecasts.

Always at the ready to catch the northern lights

Cruise ships are not exactly known for astronomy. On your average cruise ship around the Mediterranean the lights on deck never go off.

Luckily, as dedicated aurora cruise, the ship I was on had minimal lights on the main viewing deck. There was also the option to go inside the bar area, just the other side of the doors, to warm up.

During my cruise, there were always one or two passengers on deck with cameras at the ready, even on cloudy nights.

On a few occasions, speakerphones in each cabin made ship-wide announcements about sightings of aurora. It took passengers at least 10 minutes to come outside, which on two occasions meant they missed out on the fleeting displays.

Having clocked that aurora can come and go quickly, I spent each evening in the bar, yards from the viewing deck, with my coat and camera at the ready. It paid off – I was among the first to see the aurora each time they appeared. 

Kerrs wisely began the cruise by managing the expectations of passengers wowed by images across the media of bright green aurora.

“When we look at the Northern Lights, we’re relying on our rod cells to give us the sensitivity to make them visible, and whatever color information our cone cells can get, so our brain has to work with very little color information,” says Kerrs. “

So the perception for us is that the color is very muted, but it is there, and the longer you spend looking, the more of it you will see.”

Chasing down the aurora

Another advantage of an aurora cruise is that, if you so choose, you can also experience aurora-chasing on land as well. After I had spent a busy day dog-sledding and catching King Crab at the remote Snow Hotel Kirkenes, the alert went up – a substorm was imminent.

We rushed into a minibus with no clear destination, the howls of husky dogs ringing in our ears.

“The aurora is close – let’s see if we can get underneath it!” said our tour leader, Mili.

The chase was on. As if tracking a pride of lions from a safari truck, we followed the polar lights dancing through the minibus window. By the time we tumbled out onto a desolate forest road far from artificial light, a substorm was erupting.

Greenish light squeezed along Earth’s magnetic field lines like a cosmic toothpaste tube.

“Don’t spend the whole time looking at your phone,” Kerrs reminded us. “Stop, look up, remember where you are and how special this is — just watch it!”

For 20 minutes, we stood transfixed as the aurora twisted and rippled, waxed and waned until the lights eventually faded into the freezing night. An aurora cruise can give you an experience you’ll never forget, but it can also get you to places you would have otherwise never gone. 

How to capture the aurora on camera

Science of the aurora

The northern lights are caused by how Earth’s atmosphere reacts to the solar wind, which acts like a large electric current throughout the Solar System.

Earth’s magnetic field normally protects us from the solar wind but also allows some of the charged particles to enter the magnetosphere. Earth and the Sun (and, by extension, the solar wind) are magnets with magnetic fields.

“As the magnetic field of the solar wind interacts with the Earth's magnetic field, if the two are inversely orientated [opposite], a lot of that solar wind material finds its way into the Earth's magnetic environment,” says Kerrs.

“When it gets close enough to the inner part of the Earth’s magnetic field, it inherits a lot of energy, and it can be injected into the atmosphere above our heads, to create auroras.”

When magnetic field lines realign — something called magnetic reconnection — it can lead to the formation of auroras. The visible light of the aurora is created by electrons striking atoms and releasing energy as particles of light. 

The best place to see the aurora

Auroras are typically seen in polar regions at around 66º North and south latitudes, which in the Northern Hemisphere includes Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Greenland, and northern Norway, Sweden and Finland. This is why most aurora cruises sail alongside these destinations.

As we are near solar maximum, the Sun is currently more likely to produce coronal mass ejections – clouds of charged particles – that can cause geomagnetic storms. This means there is a higher likelihood of the powerful geomagnetic storms which create spectacular all-sky aurora.

That’s not to say solar maximum is the only time the aurora will be visible up here though – its possible to see aurora up here even during the solar minimum when the Sun is at its least active.

Some will wonder why anyone is traveling to see the aurora when they were visible in the UK in 2024. “During solar minimum, the odds of seeing auroras in the UK are almost zero, but they increase around and after the solar maximum,” says Kerrs, noting that the G5 geomagnetic storm in May 2024 was rare and unique.

“Ironically, that one was more amazing for the UK than it was from Arctic Norway,” he says, but he’s keen to point out that exceptional views in the UK are just that – exceptional.

Cruising under the auroral oval

The key to understanding why you need to head north to see the aurora reliably is the auroral oval, a region around the Arctic Circle where displays of the northern lights are a frequent, almost nightly event.

“The brightest auroras are seen between 10 pm and 2 am when the viewer is under the auroral oval,” says Kerss.

“Geomagnetic storms, especially G5, can cause the auroral oval to expand, making auroras visible at southerly latitudes.”

However, it’s not geomagnetic storms that he looks out for as he travels the coast of Norway while on an aurora cruise, but substorms.

A substorm is a disturbance in Earth’s magnetosphere that causes energy to be released into the ionosphere.

It causes aurora to appear, brighten and often move. In recent years, aurora chasers have become adept at interpreting the data available from NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) and Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) space weather satellites to predict sudden substorms.

When to go

When picking what time to take an aurora cruise, aurora-hunting by ship is no different from land-based chases.

The winter months are best due to more extended periods of darkness in northern latitudes, though January is often avoided since it’s dark all day above the Arctic Circle.

It’s also worth avoiding the week before a full Moon. Although moonlight doesn’t make the lights invisible and does illuminate the landscapes around you (which can be handy for aurora photographers), it makes lesser displays harder to see.

Of course, there’s always an element of chance with the aurora. You can never be sure whether you’ll see nothing at all or one of the most spectacular displays imaginable. After all, isn’t that what makes it so exciting?

Jamie Carter travelled to Norway with Hurtigruten.