mattbell

I just did some more research into what it would take to see an aurora.

So auroras are just about the largest nonastronomical object you will ever see. They can be ~200 miles high, ~500 miles wide, and thousands of miles long. Because they are formed by high-velocity solar wind particles hitting various layers of the atmosphere, they can change in a matter of minutes despite their enormous size.

For comparison, even hurricanes are only about 8 miles high... so an aurora is to a hurricane as a door is to a welcome mat. This picture shows it off rather well:

They seem to hit the sweet spot of being huge while still viscerally comprehensible in their size (unlike, say, the sun)

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I spent a lot of time looking into the quality of the aurora at various times.

We're at the low point for sunspot activity, which interestingly means more predictable auroras. If there's more sunspot activity, the aurora becomes stronger but moves further south, which means that you just wasted your money flying up to Fairbanks while the residents of Juneau are getting the show of a lifetime. The most intense aurora activity ever recorded put brilliant shows of light across the Midwest US. This happened in the 1800s, which is a good thing because if it happened today we'd have a few billion dollars of fried satellites. Back then its dancing red skies probably just scared the crap out of some ultra-religious pioneers.

Here's a "space weather" site with aurora prediction: http://www.gedds.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast/

I also looked at moon activity since the moon's light can dampen the aurora. Sunrise/sunset/moonrise/moonset/twilight reports for very northerly locations are *weird*. The sun is always moving at a glancing angle to the horizon, so twilight is extremely long. Fairbanks gets a whopping 6 hours of daylight in November. In addition, the moon is also always close to the horizon. Because of the moon's rotation around the earth, the earth's rotation and moon's rotation can interact in such a way that the moon will stay above the horizon for two full days (or below for two full days).
November 2009
Fairbanks, Alaska

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

DST Ends

Twi: 7:41am
Sunrise: 8:36am
Sunset: 4:31pm
Twi: 5:26pm
Moonrise: 3:19pm
Moonset: 7:44am

2

Twi: 7:44am
Sunrise: 8:40am
Sunset: 4:27pm
Twi: 5:23pm
Moonrise: 3:13pm
Moonset: 9:37am
Full Moon: 10:14am

3

Twi: 7:47am
Sunrise: 8:43am
Sunset: 4:24pm
Twi: 5:20pm
Moonrise: 3:03pm
Moonset: 11:43am

4

Twi: 7:50am
Sunrise: 8:46am
Sunset: 4:21pm
Twi: 5:17pm
Moon: up all day

5

Twi: 7:53am
Sunrise: 8:50am
Sunset: 4:17pm
Twi: 5:14pm
Moon: up all day

6

Twi: 7:56am
Sunrise: 8:53am
Sunset: 4:14pm
Twi: 5:11pm
Moonrise: 5:53pm
Moonset: 3:16pm

7

Twi: 7:59am
Sunrise: 8:56am
Sunset: 4:11pm
Twi: 5:08pm
Moonrise: 8:07pm
Moonset: 3:05pm

8

Twi: 8:02am
Sunrise: 9:00am
Sunset: 4:07pm
Twi: 5:06pm
Moonrise: 10:09pm
Moonset: 2:58pm

9

Twi: 8:05am
Sunrise: 9:03am
Sunset: 4:04pm
Twi: 5:03pm
Moonrise: none
Moonset: 2:52pm
Last Qtr: 6:56am

10

Twi: 8:08am
Sunrise: 9:07am
Sunset: 4:01pm
Twi: 5:00pm
Moonrise: 12:02am
Moonset: 2:47pm

11

Twi: 8:10am
Sunrise: 9:10am
Sunset: 3:58pm
Twi: 4:57pm
Moonrise: 1:49am
Moonset: 2:41pm

12

Twi: 8:13am
Sunrise: 9:14am
Sunset: 3:55pm
Twi: 4:55pm
Moonrise: 3:33am
Moonset: 2:36pm

13

Twi: 8:16am
Sunrise: 9:17am
Sunset: 3:51pm
Twi: 4:52pm
Moonrise: 5:17am
Moonset: 2:30pm

14

Twi: 8:19am
Sunrise: 9:20am
Sunset: 3:48pm
Twi: 4:50pm
Moonrise: 7:04am
Moonset: 2:24pm

15

Twi: 8:22am
Sunrise: 9:24am
Sunset: 3:45pm
Twi: 4:47pm
Moonrise: 8:56am
Moonset: 2:16pm

16

Twi: 8:24am
Sunrise: 9:27am
Sunset: 3:42pm
Twi: 4:45pm
Moonrise: 10:56am
Moonset: 2:05pm
New Moon: 10:14am

17

Twi: 8:27am
Sunrise: 9:31am
Sunset: 3:39pm
Twi: 4:43pm
Moon: down all day

18

Twi: 8:30am
Sunrise: 9:34am
Sunset: 3:36pm
Twi: 4:40pm
Moon: down all day

19

Twi: 8:33am
Sunrise: 9:37am
Sunset: 3:33pm
Twi: 4:38pm
Moonrise: 2:44pm
Moonset: 3:51pm

20

Twi: 8:35am
Sunrise: 9:41am
Sunset: 3:30pm
Twi: 4:36pm
Moonrise: 2:20pm
Moonset: 5:58pm

21

Twi: 8:38am
Sunrise: 9:44am
Sunset: 3:27pm
Twi: 4:34pm
Moonrise: 2:11pm
Moonset: 7:44pm

22

Twi: 8:40am
Sunrise: 9:47am
Sunset: 3:24pm
Twi: 4:32pm
Moonrise: 2:04pm
Moonset: 9:22pm

23

Twi: 8:43am
Sunrise: 9:51am
Sunset: 3:22pm
Twi: 4:29pm
Moonrise: 1:59pm
Moonset: 10:54pm

24

Twi: 8:46am
Sunrise: 9:54am
Sunset: 3:19pm
Twi: 4:28pm
Moonrise: 1:53pm
Moonset: none
First Qtr: 12:40pm

25

Twi: 8:48am
Sunrise: 9:57am
Sunset: 3:16pm
Twi: 4:26pm
Moonrise: 1:48pm
Moonset: 12:24am

26

Twi: 8:50am
Sunrise: 10:01am
Sunset: 3:14pm
Twi: 4:24pm
Moonrise: 1:43pm
Moonset: 1:55am

27

Twi: 8:53am
Sunrise: 10:04am
Sunset: 3:11pm
Twi: 4:22pm
Moonrise: 1:38pm
Moonset: 3:28am

28

Twi: 8:55am
Sunrise: 10:07am
Sunset: 3:09pm
Twi: 4:20pm
Moonrise: 1:33pm
Moonset: 5:07am

29

Twi: 8:58am
Sunrise: 10:10am
Sunset: 3:06pm
Twi: 4:19pm
Moonrise: 1:27pm
Moonset: 6:54am

30

Twi: 9:00am
Sunrise: 10:13am
Sunset: 3:04pm
Twi: 4:17pm
Moonrise: 1:20pm
Moonset: 8:54am

Standard/Winter Time for entire month.
Courtesy of www.sunrisesunset.com
Copyright © 2001-2006 Steve Edwards

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At this point I'm thinking Fairbanks over Iceland or Scandinavia. The areas of Scandinavia that are good aurora-watching territory are very far from most of the cultural stuff. Iceland could work well, but there's a huge amount of natural beauty there that would be hard to see during the 6-hour days. The Great Icelandic Road trip is best undertaken in the summer. Iceland is also easy to throw in as a stopover to a future Europe trip. Icelandair has tickets that encourage t

The Fairbanks planning also looks fairly easy... there are lots of B&Bs you can stay at for $100 a night.