Aurora tourists take in a show in Norway from deck of the ms Nordnorge in March 2018, on one of the aurora cruises offered by the Hurtigruten ferry and cruise line.

Few sky sights inspire us as does the aurora. The northern hemisphere version, the aurora borealis, is the most accessible, sparking a popular trade in aurora tourism. Even those with little interest in stargazing place seeing the Northern Lights high on their life-long “bucket list” of experiences.

I’m fortunate to live in western Canada, where the zone in which auroras are seen most often – the auroral oval – dips farthest south on the planet. I see auroras several times a month from my rural backyard, though most might be dim displays. For those farther south, any show of Northern Lights is a less common, if rare, sight.

As the Sun continues to decline in activity during its current once-a-decade “solar minimum,” bright and widespread displays of Northern Lights trigged by solar storms will become less frequent. That will certainly be the case from the latitudes of the northern United States, northern Europe, and even from much of populated southern Canada.

Increasingly, aurora chasers will have to travel farther afield, to the north, to where the auroral oval normally resides. From the choice regions under the oval, Northern Lights can be a nightly sight, even during the depths of solar minimum.

The prime locations include far northern Norway, Sweden and Finland, anywhere in Iceland, in Alaska and, in my home country of Canada, Churchill, Yellowknife, and Whitehorse. All these locations cater to aurora tourism, with tours and lodges geared to providing the “bucket list” experience.

While traveling north in summer might be attractive for the warm weather, you won’t see the Lights. The night sky will be too bright, perhaps lit by a midnight Sun from locations above the Arctic Circle (latitude 66° North) around the June summer solstice.

Aurora season at northern sites often doesn’t begin until late August at the earliest. While autumn might be a great time to go, check the weather prospects at your intended destination. You might find that the depths of winter offer the clearest skies. For many locations February and March are the prime aurora months, not because the Lights are more active but because the cold winter nights bring the clearest skies and best sighting chances.

If you travel north, do so with realistic expectations. During a week-long stay you might get clear skies on only one or two nights, though cold Arctic sites generally have better odds.

But then the Lights also have to perform. They are present on most nights under the oval, but might be dramatically bright and active on only one night of your stay, if that.

Even then, don’t expect to see the range of colors depicted in photographs. The long exposures of cameras bring out the deep reds that the eye isn’t sensitive to.

But when bright, auroras do look green, with perhaps a lower fringe of pink, even to the eye. And the eye is much better than most cameras at seeing the motions of the curtains, which can ripple and wave across the sky in patterns that defy explanation and belief.

Alan Dyer is an astronomy author and photographer living in southern Alberta, Canada. He serves as a contributing editor to SkyNews and Sky and Telescope magazines, and is author of several print and ebooks on astronomy and astrophotography. Asteroid 78434 is named for him. More info can be found on his website.