Alaska Uncovered Podcast

Northern lights chasing demystified with Steve Busby

• Jennie Thwing Flaming and Jay Flaming

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 Welcome to the Alaska Uncovered Podcast with me, your host, Jennie Thwing Flaming, my occasional co-host and full-time husband, Jay, and I bring you accurate, helpful, and entertaining information about Alaska Travel and life in Alaska. Before we jump in, we want to take a moment to thank our Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible.

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Are you chasing the Northern Lights on your trip to Alaska? If you are, you gotta listen to this episode. My guest today is Steve Busby. Steve is the founder of Great Land Adventures, which does a variety of small group tours in both Anchorage and Fairbanks, including Northern Lights Tours.

And Steve has been on the podcast before. We talked about Matanuska Glacier in a previous episode, . So go back and listen to that if you're into glaciers. But today we are going to do real talk and some myth busting around the Aurora. So Steve, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for being here.

Jennie, thank you for having me. I'm, I'm really excited to dive into this topic. Yes. Appreciate you having me. Yes. This is such a fun one to talk about. Can you just briefly, again, folks may have listened to the episode about a year and a half ago, but if they missed it then I would love to have you tell them a little bit about like who you are, how you got to Alaska, why people should listen to you about the Aurora.

Uh, wonderful. So yeah, my name's Steve Busby and uh, as you said, I'm the, the founder and owner of Great Land Adventures. We're doing small group tours around the, uh, south Central portion and interiors of Alaska. And, uh, my I came to Alaska in 2005. I was a tour guide for a company that sent me up here and I brought a group.

First time I ever came here, I brought a group of people. I picked 'em up in Seattle, and we did a, a 26 day tour from Seattle up to Alaska. And, uh, the, my, my first, I fell in love with Alaska. Immediately I crossed over the border. And the very first night I was in Alaska, we, we stopped, uh, in camped in a little town called toc, which is in Eastern Alaska.

And so we're camping at the campground there, and they have, they're having a sourdough pancake. Toss contest where you throw, you throw sourdough pancakes into basically a target kind of like. The game corn hole, I guess. Yes. But with sourdough pancakes. Oh gosh. And I won the sourdough pancake con contest at the well done campground there in took.

And, uh, I was just, uh, I was really, it was really, I was really excited about that. And the campground host was just this interesting guy. And, and, uh, so then our next stop is we go out to the little town of McCarthy in the heart of Wrangle St. Elias National Park. And it happened to be summer solstice, which, as you know, is a a big celebration here.

Yes. And in other parts of the world, in the northern latitudes. And they were having a big bonfire there out by the. The Kennecott Glacier. And I just remember having this moment out at this bonfire on summer solstice where I felt like I had found my home and my people. It was a really distinct feeling I just felt at home and it's amazing.

I've been here ever since and been doing small group tours and helping people see this place that I just find so amazing and, and every single day it, is something different here. The landscape, the weather, the people it's just an amazing place and it's really an honor to, to share my home with guests from all over the world.

Yeah. Love that Steve. I love your to story, which reminds me later, some point when it fits in, I have kind of a great Northern light story for, to which I'll bring that up when it makes sense. Anyway, for, for those listening, if you're like to, what is that? It is a very small community, um, along the Alaska Highway, so it's a main for people driving into Alaska, it's usually the main sort of point of civilization that folks enter and yes, I can imagine a sourdough pancake toss.

That's pretty amazing. Okay. So Steve I'm really excited that we're having this conversation because you and I have talked a number of times, not on the podcast, about Northern Lights myths and things that kind get in the way of people being able to have a great Aurora experience.

So I am really excited we're talking about this. To start off with, can you talk a little bit about maybe what's the biggest myth you feel like when it comes to seeing the Northern Lights in Alaska? What is something that people are often coming to you with that is just way unhelpful? Yeah, a absolutely great question, Jennie.

I did wanna say that I do have a degree in atmospheric C chemistry, so I do have a little bit of a science background on this subject matter. That's awesome. So the biggest it, it's a that's, the biggest, myth I would say is the KP index.

Aha. And so the KP index, it's it's a number from zero to nine and it is. It's a measure of the, what's called geomagnetic activity. And, and geomagnetic activity essentially refers to the magnetic field of the earth. And so the KP level is measuring the, basically the amount of disturbance in the earth's magnetic field.

And if there is a lot of disturbance in the earth's magnetic field, the KP number will be higher. If there is less disturbance in the magnetic field, it will be lower. And so a zero would be the lowest and a nine would be the highest. Yeah. I was just gonna ask you to tell everybody kind of what the scale is for the number, so thank you.

Yeah. It's zero to nine and. Unfortunately it, it is a useful number for certain things, but it is not a useful number for predicting Aurora in latitudes as far north as we are in Alaska. And so it's a very, very misleading number. Mm-hmm. But unfortunately, it has over the years become the go-to number that people look at, to determine if a, there's gonna be strong Aurora or if there is strong Aurora.

And unfortunately, it just really couldn't be further from the truth. It's a flawed measurement, which we'll get into, but that's the number one thing that everybody's looking at the KP number. Yeah. And we're kind of on a, we're kind of on a public outreach here to. Help people kind of get away from that number and not just guests that are trying to see the Aurora, but you know, locals that are talking to guests that are coming to see the Aurora Yeah.

And explain you know, what that number is and, and why we shouldn't be really even looking at it. Yeah. I'm glad that you mentioned a couple things. So for listeners, if you listen to the episode a couple months ago where we talked about photography, which included the Aurora this also came up in that episode, but I think I'm glad you mentioned too, that like, it may more meaningful at different latitudes.

Because I think that's something that I have run into a lot is where folks think like, oh, well these were the circumstances where I saw them in say, Michigan, but that's, or Florida. Yeah. You know, but that's pretty different from what's happening at these latitudes that we're talking about in Alaska.

Abs. Absolutely. It is a more meaningful number if you're say in Michigan or somewhere further south in Alaska Yeah. To know if there's, if it's worth even going out and trying. But in Alaska, the, you know, we have thousands of nights of anecdotal data being out you know, chasing Aurora, where we have seen really strong Aurora at really low KP levels, even KP zero.

Yeah. And we have seen no Aurora or very faint Aurora at high PKP levels of six or seven. And so it, understanding it's a little bit. It's a little bit kind of, uh, I would say inside baseball, it, it, it gets a little deep and I'm gonna try to break it down as simple as possible to understand why that happens.

And not, and then also you know, just share what we are looking at as professional Aurora Chasers instead of that KP level. Yes. Um, love it. Okay. Before we get to that, Steve, another thing that I know people use a lot is different apps to predict the Aurora. And I know a lot of those are closely connected to the KEP index.

So before we leave that and kind of talk about things that are good tools, could you just say a little bit about if I'm using an app like. Where is the data coming from? Is there anything I can use in that app instead that would be helpful? You know, I'm thinking about the ones that say like, oh, there's a 21% chance of seeing in Aurora right now, or something like that.

Yeah. So the, there are some useful data points in the Aurora apps that we want to be looking at, but what the way that the apps work that give you a percentage chance of seeing the Aurora at a certain location is they, they take two measurements and they basically combine 'em into a percentage chance.

And one is they'll look at the cloud cover, and they'll pull that just from. You know, weather forecasts for that specific location. And then they'll combine that with the KP level. And the theory is if the KP level is high and the clouds have are, and it's clear and there's a low percentage of cloud cover, that your percentage chance of seeing the aurora is gonna be high.

And vice versa. If the KP level is low at a given moment and the clouds are thick, or some combination of that, that there's gonna be a low percentage. Yeah. But so unfortunately why those apps are inherently flawed is because the KP level is. Inherently flawed for predicting Aurora. It's a useful number in some respects to look at in the past.

But I think what we have to do is look at the, how it's calculated to, to understand why that is. And, and so we don't even look at the KP level when we're figuring out you know, what the Aurora's gonna be doing. We're looking at other data points in these apps, mainly what's called the interplanetary magnetic field.

Yes. And that's a measurement of the strength and direction of the magnetic field, of the solar wind. And so, yeah, the, those apps we get people all the time on the tours with their apps out and, and they have great intentions and, and I understand why it's useful because it's very easy to just look at an app and say, oh, I have a, uh, 90% chance, or I have a 0% chance.

And I'm here to just dispel using that and point people in other directions of what to look at. Love it. Yeah. Thanks for explaining that. Okay. So let's, so you talked a little bit about the interplanetary magnetic field being, data points that measure that being more helpful.

This might be a good time to hit some basics about what is happening when we see in Aurora. And I know that is a really challenging thing to explain in an audio format Yeah. Without a model. Yeah. But to the degree that you can, Steve, would you be willing to just explain for folks what is actually happening when you see an aurora in the sky?

Absolutely. I'm, I'm gonna do my, my best here to, to break know it's, break it down for audio's. Art. Yeah. So what's happening is the, the sun is, a giant nuclear power plant essentially that is emitting you know, heat and energy out into the universe. And the, there is this thing called a solar wind.

That emanates from the sun and this solar wind, what it is, is it is a basically it's called a plasma. And a plasma is a electrically charged gas. And so it has weight and mass and it has electrical charge, and it's moving and it's moving very quickly, uh, up to 8 million miles an hour. And it has a lot of energy associated with it, this solar wind.

And we, the way we're measuring the solar wind is important to note. So, in 2014 we launched a satellite called the Discover Satellite. And that satellite orbits the earth at approximately 1 million kilometers outside of. Earth's atmosphere, and that's the point at which the gravitational pull of the earth and the sun is equal.

And so it takes the least amount of energy possible to keep that satellite in that in that zone to orbit. And so that satellite is measuring the solar wind, and it's giving us the data points that determine all of these, um, space weather data. Mm-hmm. And so it's doing two things. The satellite, the discover satellite , one it is taking photos of the sun.

And so from these photos of the sun, we can determine what is happening on the surface of the sun. And if we think that there's going to be an elevated solar wind or a more base level solar wind. And there's, there's two phenomenon that happen on the sun that cause increased solar wind. One is called a solar flare, and those come from sunspots.

What sunspots are, if you're looking at a photo from the satellite of the sun, they look like bright watt white dots on the surface of the sun. And what they are is they're a spot on the surface of the sun that has a volatile mix of magnetism on the surface of the sun. And essentially they will erupt from this volatility and shoot solar flares out into space.

And if one of these solar flares is directed at Earth, then we will expect that we'll have an increased solar wind energy and potentially a stronger aurora. The other one is a coronal hole and a coronal hole. When you look at a photo of the sun will look like a black hole on the surface of the sun.

And what those Corona holes are is there really weak spots. In the magnetic field of the sun, and essentially they're allowing an increased stream of solar, wind out then would normally come out of the sun. So those are the two things on the sun that we look at to determine if we believe that there's going to be a increased solar wind.

And these photos are how the KP is predicted in the future. So if there is, say a solar flare or a corona hole on the part of the sun that's facing earth, the prediction. Will be higher for a KP level than it would be if there wasn't. Yeah. And so that's how that kp level is determined in the future.

Yeah. It's just a prediction. Yeah. Okay. And so then the, the second thing that this satellite does is once the solar wind from the sun gets to the earth or to the satellite, actually it actually measures that solar wind and it measures a couple of things from the solar wind. First, it measures the speed of the solar wind, and so, it usually gets reported in kilometers per second.

And so the, the solar wind will a will a really low solar wind would be. Say 200, and I think the lowest is 257 kilometers per second. And it'll get up sometimes almost as high as 900 kilometers per second. And the faster the solar wind is moving, the more energy we will have and the more potential that we would have for stronger aurora.

So that's the first thing it measures. And then it measures the density of the solar wind. And so this solar wind is made up of particles. They're basically like , not pulverized, but uh, just. Atoms from the sun, mostly hydrogen and helium, and some heavy metals that have basically been atomized.

And it's just all the internal parts of an atom just scattered and floating through space. And so the more of these particles that are in the solar wind, the more dense it will be, and the higher that number will be for the density. And the more dense something is, the more energy it will have if it's moving picture a feather flying through the air and hitting you as compared to a same size, say like a, a lead ball or something that's maybe the same size as a feather, but the lead's much more dense.

And if it hits you , it's gonna cause a lot more force to be transferred to you. Yeah. Than a feather would be. And so the more dense the solar wind is the more potential there is for the energy to be transferred. And then the. The third thing that it measures, that's the most, really the most important part.

And when we're talking about predicting, Aurora is called the interplanetary magnetic field. And there's two measurements that are given in the interplanetary magnetic field. And what it is, is it's a measure of the magnetic field, of the solar wind. And so because this solar wind is it has mass and it's moving and it's electrically charged, it has its own magnetic field.

It's kind of like, when there's electricity running through a copper wire. If you. The wire will have a magnetic field around it. The same thing is happening with the solar wind. And so this interplanetary magnetic field, we get a measurement of the strength of it first. And that one is, is given as a coefficient called bt, and the higher the BT number is, the stronger, essentially the magnetic field is.

And I like to think of it as magnets because it's a little bit easier to think of it that way. Yeah. And so the higher the BT is, the stronger the magnet, and then it gives us a direction. That the magnetic field is pointing and it gives us that number in three. It's like a vector measurement. And so a vector measurement gives it, it's a three dimensional measurement and it gives us bx, BY, and bz.

And from those three Coates we can determine which way the magnetic field's polarity is pointing. And as far as Aurora is concerned, what we want to know is mostly associated with the bz, which is the direction of that vector of the magnet pointed in a North pole, south Pole direction. So basically the part of the magnetic field that's pointed towards earth.

And so that one is really the most important number that we wanna look at when we're determining what we believe the Aurora is gonna do. So essentially that. That solar wind, it can be really strong and really dense. But if the magnetic field is pointing in a direction where it's gonna repel from the earth's magnetic field, and it's worth pointing out that the earth has a magnetic field.

So the earth has a magnetic field that's caused by the fact that we have a molten core and the earth is spinning and essentially the positive end of the magnetic field is, uh, towards the North Pole. And the negative end of the field is towards the South pole. And that magnetic field of the earth is stable.

It pretty much stays in that direction all the time. Uh, it, it flips every 11 years or so. But that. That doesn't really matter for Aurora. Essentially the, the point is that you wanna keep in mind is that the earth has a stable magnetic field. The solar wind has a very unstable magnetic field that changes constantly.

Yeah. And how those two interact will determine how much energy gets into the atmosphere to cause Aurora. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause that, yeah, that's a really good way of thinking about it. As you're talking, I'm thinking about, you know, you've got the Earth's atmosphere, which is, weather isn't necessarily stable, but the fact that like we have gases in our atmosphere around the earth doesn't change.

Yeah. And then we've got a magnetic field and those things are kind of always there, but the solar wind is the part that varies and therefore. The data around the solar wind tells you more. 'cause that's the thing that's changing. Is that like a reasonable summary? Absolutely. And so, you know, o once the solar wind reaches the satellite and we have those measurements, then we have a really good idea of what's gonna happen from the time that it takes the solar wind to pass the satellite to actually get into the earth's atmosphere.

Yeah. And that's, for, it's usually about an hour. If the solar wind's moving really fast, it could be as short of a time as 30 minutes. If it's moving really slow, it'll be about 90 minutes. But I would say in general, it's about an hour. Amount of time from when the solar wind passes the satellite and we get the measurements and before it arrives at the Earth's atmosphere.

And that's really the amount of time that we can get any kind of , real predictions and reads on what the aurora's gonna do. Yeah. Is roughly an hour, 30 to 90 minutes, depending on the speed of the aurora. So once we have that data, we can know, oh. The solar winds fast and, it's dense and the magnetic fields the correct direction.

There's probably gonna be Aurora in about an hour. Yep, or vice versa. The SolarWinds really slow and the magnetic fields pointed the wrong direction. There's probably not gonna be, very much any Aurora or very much Aurora over the next hour. And that doesn't. Stay stable throughout the course of the nighttime, right?

When we're on the opposite side of the earth from the sun. That'll change throughout the night. And so just because it's doing one thing at a certain point doesn't mean that's what it's gonna be doing in an hour or two hours, three hours. So, yep. Really we can only kind of get a real good, accurate read on if we think there's gonna be Aurora or not more than about an hour in advance.

Yep. Yeah that's awesome. So in a moment, we're gonna take a break and then do some like rapid fire q and a, but before we do that I was wondering, Steve, if you could talk about the optics a little bit and where the different kind of colors and motion kind of things come from.

Um, yeah. That we actually see when we're looking at the Aurora. Absolutely. And so I think we have to start with basically what the Aurora is. And so, you know that solar wind that we've been talking about that isn't the aurora the solar wind is the energy that causes the aurora. And so once that solar, the energy from the solar wind, if it, if it gets into the Earth's magnetic or the Earth's atmosphere, that energy will collide with the gases in the Earth's atmosphere.

And the atmosphere is mostly made up of nitrogen and oxygen. And those two gases are the gases that, that are responsible for Aurora. So those gases will be bombarded by this energy from the solar wind, and they'll absorb the energy for a brief time. It can be anywhere from about three seconds to a hundred seconds, depending on.

The elevation in the atmosphere in which gas it is, but essentially, nitrogen and oxygen will absorb that energy for a brief moment, and they'll go into what physicists call an excited state. And once they go back to equilibrium, they will release the energy that they've absorbed as a photon of light. And the easiest way to think of it is, it's almost exactly what happens in a neon light.

Yeah. So in a, in a neon light what you have is you have a, a glass tube that's filled with, it's not always neon. It can be different gases. So the different gases will cause different colors. But you run electricity through the gas in the. In the glass tube and it will, those gases inside the glass tube will absorb the energy and then release it back out as photons of light and giving you the neon light.

It's essentially the same thing in the atmosphere. The oxygen and nitrogen will absorb that energy and be releasing photons of light as they go back to their equilibrium. And there's basically four collars that are produced from this phenomenon. And so oxygen is the most common gas that is responsible for Aurora, and the oxygen will give off a green color and a red color.

And the. The green color comes from what we call molecular oxygen, which is, uh, two oxygen atoms, O2. That's what we breathe in, and that's what we use for life. And the reds mostly caused from what we call atomic oxygen, which is just a single oxygen atom in the atmosphere. And so oxygen will do green and red, and then nitrogen will make pink and purple, and it requires more energy to.

Get nitrogen molecules and atoms into an excited state. So we see those pinks and purples when the solar wind, when the energy is higher, that's getting into their atmosphere. So most common colors are from oxygen, green and red, and then nitrogen pink and purple. Yep. We'll see during stronger Aurora events.

Yeah, the pink and purple is really cool when it comes out. It's so cool. It's really for my favorites, my favorite's the pink, because usually when you're seeing the pink, it's usually pretty bright and it's usually dancing. Usually the Aurora's dancing when you get that pink color. So yeah, the, the pink part of the aurora is definitely my personal favorite.

Definitely. Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. Okay. Thanks for explaining all that, Steve. , I love your. Your kind of explanations because it's really clear that instead of being in like a wonky science lab, you've been explaining this to people, you know, so it's one thing to have knowledge, but as probably, everyone who's listening knows, not everyone who's knowledgeable is able to talk about it to normal people.

Yeah. I, I would say that, some people are, , interested in this phenomenon and, and dissect that. And other people are like, okay Steve, thanks a lot, when are the lights gonna be out? Right? Yes. Yes. And I assume for people who've chosen to listen to this episode, they probably wanted the more in depth answer, but I know exactly, exactly what you mean.

Yeah. Cool. All right, we're gonna take a short break and when we come back I'm gonna pepper Steve with some frequently asked questions about the Aurora. So we'll be right back.





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Hey everyone, it's Jennie just breaking in quick to remind you about the brand new Alaska Uncovered Planning Club that is starting on September 18th.

This is $9 a month. It's a private podcast feed where you submit your questions and I'll answer them every Thursday. And we'll also have some discussion there and get you excited for your trip. So head on over to. patreon.com/alaska uncovered or follow the link in the show notes to come join us.

See you over there.

Okay, we are back everybody with Steve Busby, Aurora specialist, and the owner of Greatland Adventures, and we have been talking all about some of the unhelpful data that's out there and what to use instead and what's actually happening with the Aurora. So Steve I am going to try to hit you with the questions that I frequently get about the Aurora, and you could let me know if, there's any that I miss.

Okay. So the first one is Steve. Does the Aurora really look like it does in the photos? Yeah, that's a great question. And so the answer is yes and no. It's, it's kind of a two part. Part question. It really depends on, on how strong the Aurora is. And it, and the answer lies in the science of optics and the way our human eyes perceive light.

Our eyes have a little part of the back of our eye called the retina, and it's about the size of a pinhead. And the light comes through our through our eyes, through the lens, and it gets focused on the retina. And we have these little cells in our retina that interpret the light. And we have two types of cells in that retina.

We have cone cells and rod cells. . So, so about, 95% of the cells are rod cells and about 5% are cone cells. The rod cells in our retina are responsible they see light and they interpret it to our brains in gray scale.

And the cone cells in our eyes are the ones that are perceiving color. And so when we're out looking for Aurora, it's usually dark and it's usually low light. So when it's a low light situations, us as humans, we're not, our eyes are really not adapted very well to perceive light and color.

At low light situations. Picture yourself in a dark room and you can't really see much. And if you can see things, you can't really tell what color they are. And so if you then turn on the light you can see the color very easily. And so the aurora, the, the brightness of the aurora varies drastically.

Sometimes it's very faint and it's not emitting very much light. And then other times it's so bright that it can light up the night sky. Almost as bright as a full moon. And you'll actually be looking around and if it's, especially if there's snow on the ground, the snow will be green and it'll be so bright you can see by it.

Yeah. And so everywhere in between. And so when those wind, the aurora is more faint, there's not a lot of light getting into our eyes. And so our eyes are perceiving the light that's entering from the aurora with our rod cells. And the rod cells are giving us that light in a gray scale. And so when you're looking at Aurora with your eyes when the aurora is faint, it will look more white.

And it's often can be difficult to even distinguish during that time. Yep. What exactly is Aurora and what's not? Our eyes are just not very good at perceiving color. Yep. The light is not actually white. It's usually when that's happening, it's green , because that's the most common color.

And then what happens is, is you take a photo of that. White per what you're perceiving as a white aurora, and the camera will give you this vivid green color. And so that's, that's a big difference. And so the cameras are are invention of an approximation of an eyeball human eye. And they essentially work in the same way, but they're able to perceive colors at much lower light levels than our human eyeballs can.

And so when you're looking at Aurora and it, if it looks white, it's not actually white, it is green. But our eyes just can't perceive the color very well. So then when the aurora gets, as it gets brighter, it's emitting more light and there's more of that light getting into our eyes. And so when that happens, there can be enough light from the Aurora to activate the cone cells in our eyes and we can.

Perceive the color when we're looking at it. And the brighter the aurora gets, the more light is getting into our eyes and the, the better we're able to perceive the colors. And so when that happens, when the aurora gets really bright like that it actually can be more impressive than what it looks like when you take a photo.

And so a lot of times when you see photos Yeah. Yeah. When you see photos, the, if it's a faint aurora it'll be a more impressive, s thing to look at in the photo than it will with your human eye. But when it gets really bright like that, there's usually depth and movement to the aurora as well.

And our eyes are seeing in three dimensions. And when we take a photo of it, it's in two dimensions and also. Even with the best cameras there's gonna be a certain amount of time that the aperture of the camera is open longer than our eyes perceive it with. And so there's a little bit more of a blur than we, we can see it more vividly and sharper with our human eye when it gets bright like that.

And so when the aurora gets bright, it does actually look like the photos and I would contend even more impressive. Yeah. 'cause there's depth, there's depth and movement to it that you can't perceive, with the camera. Yeah. And when, when it's a low level, it doesn't look like it does in the photos, it, it looks like a kind of a faint white glow, whereas the photo will per will, will show a green glow or e even, defined shapes and structures to the aurora that our eyes just can't perceive.

Yeah. Yeah. I. I was thinking about how I should, what I should have asked you is, can you see the aurora with your naked eye? Which is something like the last, spring when there were aurora's visible, like in a lot of the lower 48, I had a lot of people ask me like, oh, so in Alaska can you see it with your naked eye?

And I was like yeah. You know, but it's like both are true, right? If it's super, super, super faint, your camera might pick it up or like you were saying, if it's, you can see it, but your camera picks up the color. Yeah. That isn't amazing with your naked eye. But then there are so many of these situations, like you said, when it's really bright, it's way better with your eyes than with a camera.

Like I completely agree with. That's absolutely it. It's a pretty jaw dropping experience to be lucky enough to, to witness an event like that. And also, everybody's eyes are different. And so when we're looking at things we all perceive color slightly differently. And if you've never seen Aurora before you can be looking right at Aurora and not really know that it's there for a couple of reasons.

One is usually most people aren't really diligent about allowing their eyes to adjust to the dark. Yeah. And so they, they're, they're may be out in the dark, but they're looking at their phone screen. Yeah. Or they have the light on inside their car. Yeah. And it, it'll take up to 30 minutes for our eyes to fully adjust to darkness.

Yep. And if you give yourself time and you don't look at any screens and you allow your eyes to adjust, and if you have a trained eye. You can see Aurora pretty usually, no matter how faint. Yeah. Uh, if you know what you're looking for. Yeah. If you don't know what you're looking for. That definitely happens quite a bit when, when folks are trying to see Aurora for the first time and it's say, a, a really faint Aurora display at that moment, they don't even know it's there.

And they think that, uh, they didn't, that they, there was no Aurora, but it was actually there. So you need to let your eyes adjust. That's gonna give you a, the ability to see the Aurora when it's more faint. Uh, but it's also gonna give you the ability to see the colors. Yeah. Uh, more vividly when it does get bright.

Yeah. And then the other thing is that if there's any kind of clouds or moisture in the air. It can be really hard for our eyes to distinguish between what is a cloud and what is Aurora. Yes. And it's really faint. And so it, you'll take a, you'll be looking at something and you can't really tell, and then when you take a picture, you can clearly see, okay, the cloud looks wide to gray and the aurora looks green.

And that'll help you to kind of determine where it is during those times when there's a faint display. Absolutely. Okay. Steve, what time do the lights come out? I know you partially answered this one already, but Yeah. They, we get this question all the time, you know, it's, the answer is, uh, all the time.

There's actually Aurora during the daytime as well. Yeah. Uh, on the day side of the earth. It's just, you can't see the aurora in the day because the aurora is not as bright as the sunlight and so, the aurora is happening at all times. It's just, you need it to be dark, to be able to, to see it.

So, it depends on where you are in the world and how far north you are and what the nighttime astronomical darkness times are. But generally, I would say between, uh, 9:00 PM to say 6:00 AM is the general, I've seen it as early. In January as 5:15 PM in Alaska. Yeah. And I've seen it as late as 9:30 AM Yeah.

So December and January are time up here where we have the most amount of darkness. Yep. And so, that was during, uh, was in January when I saw those times, but, uh, the time when we're directly in the line of the solar wind from the sun is that time when we're it's called, uh, I believe it's called Astronomical Midnight.

And that's in Alaska from approximately 11:00 PM to 4:00 AM. Yep. And so during that time is when the majority of. The roar will be seen, but it absolutely can be seen and is seen before that and after that. Yep. So we're trying, we're trying, when we're doing tours, we're trying to have people in position usually between 11:00 PM and 4:00 AM.

Yep. And if we're reading the data and we think it's gonna come out earlier, perhaps we might try to get to somewhere quicker than that. Yeah. Or, or if there's clouds and we think it's gonna be clear later, we might start later and try to be in position later based on clouds. But anytime it's actually, anytime that it's dark enough to be seen over the sunlight, the aurora can be seen.

Yeah. Yep. Okay. Closely related. Steve, what's the best month to see the aurora, the, uh, there? So there, there's, that's kind of a tricky question because yeah. If you look at historical data, there is. In Alaska at least specifically. I, I can't speak really for other locations 'cause a lot of it has to do with weather.

You know, yeah. If it's clear there's probably gonna be Aurora and if it's cloudy. It's probably gonna be hard to see the aurora if it's really cloudy. Even if the aurora's really bright you're probably not gonna see it with your eyes. You might see a glow in the clouds with the camera, but, yeah.

So historically the times around the equinoxes have more frequent, stronger Aurora occurrences. And so that is September and March. So the, the fall equinox, the autonomal equinox is usually, uh, September 21st and the spring equinox is March 21st. And during those times the way that the earth is tilted and the magnetic field of the earth, it's generally more receptive to allowing the solar wind to get into the atmosphere to cause Aurora.

So there is a higher occurrence of stronger Aurora during those times around the equinoxes. However it really does. It really is just the luck of the draw. Yeah. You can have really strong Aurora at any time. It just matters what the sun is doing. Yeah. So if, if the sun is putting out strong solar wind with the correctly aligned magnetic field, it doesn't really matter the time of year there's gonna be strong Aurora.

And if it's clear, you're gonna be able to see it. And so every year's a little bit different and we'll have really long streaks sometimes where I think this last March, this was a particularly good march, this last March, I think we saw it, I believe it was 25 nights. Nice. In March this year. But we've had months like that in January and December.

Yep. And that is kind of to go aside, that is one of the myths too, that. Locals will tell people that, December or January are the best times to see the Aurora. 'cause that's when it's the darkest and it's actually exactly the opposite. Tho those months have lower occurrences of Aurora, uh, because it's closer to the solstice, the winter solstice.

Yep. And the Earth's magnetic field just isn't quite lined up. And also we tend to have more clouds during those months. Yeah. Some Decembers and some Januarys are really great and it's really the luck of the draw and it's really hard to plan around. Yep. Like this last year, new Year's.

Yeah. There was an amazing Aurora on New Year's and I was in Anchorage and when I lived in Fairbanks, of course we saw the Aurora all the time, but like. In Anchorage, I feel like you have to make a little bit more of an effort. You know, it's like a little bit further south and a little bit cloudier and like that kind of thing.

And it was amazing. And like there was no reason why it should have been amazing. Except there was a solar flare was solar, but other than that fla Yeah. But other, there was nothing that you could have predicted your trip around that would've said that was gonna be such a great night. And it was amazing.

Yeah. And the night before and after we're not, exactly. And the,, that was a fun night. I have I have kids eight and two and oh, and we were out doing New Year's stuff. And so we had, we had sparklers and stuff in our backyard and we were just out on the back patio of our house in Anchorage.

Yeah. Watching really amazing orry. It was fun. And. Yeah. New Year's was a good night. So it can happen anytime. And what I always recommend to people is the, it's really hard to plan to be there, here at the best time. Yep. Even if you have the ability to travel at the last minute, you never know , yeah.

What the magnetic field of the solar wind is gonna do. So Yep. You can be watching and you can wait for a flare and you can book a last minute flight and you can come up here and the flare arrives and the wind, solar, wind arrives and it has the wrong. Polarity of the magnetic field and it's a dud. Yep, yep.

Every night, I always tell people every night has the potential to be a great night, and every night has the potential to be a dud. Yep. And it's all just gonna come down to what that magnetic field of the solar wind is doing. E So on the nights when we have a really just, kind of, , low solar wind speed and density, sometimes the magnetic field is lined up perfectly for many hours in a row.

And you have brilliant Aurora to spray displays on nights when you wouldn't think that it was gonna happen because the data's telling you that it won't. But and then nights when you think it's gonna be really good and, and then the media will get ahold of when those solar flares happen and they'll put out articles.

Yeah. There might be Aurora across the lower 48 and, and everybody's driving around trying to get to dark skies and. And then the magnetic field arrives. And it's the wrong way. Yep. It's really difficult to plan ahead. Yeah. And so I always tell people just pick the time that fits your schedule the best.

Yeah. And and then give yourself enough time don't just come up here for one night. Yep. And turn around and go home three nights minimum, ideally five or more nights. Yep. To allow yourself the best possible opportunity to see it. Yep. Absolutely. Okay. The last one about the Aurora before we move to our wrap up questions is, so Steve, do you need to take a tour to see the Aurora?

And maybe a second question is, who should take a tour to see the Aurora? Like what's the benefit of a tour versus just going out and looking? Yeah, absolutely. And. That's something that, we talk about a lot here is, you don't need to do a tour to see the Aurora. Mm-hmm. You can, you could step off the plane and be seeing the aurora, out the window, if you're lucky.

And if the aurora's really bright, you can be in the parking lot of the city or downtown or, and be seeing a strong Aurora. Yeah. But, taking a tour what it does is. So tours do a few things. You know, first of all, Alaska is cold and it, we have winter road conditions.

And so, taking a tour gives you a safe space to go out and attempt to see it. The tour operators have specially equipped vehicles to travel on winter roads, and the drivers are, used to driving on these roads and also we the emergency equipment. And the last thing you want to be is have a car breakdown at 40 below.

Yeah. And be not fun to be in a car with no heat at 40. Below it, it can be a life or death situation. So I think number one is, is safety. Yeah. And then convenience. You can. You can read up and learn all of the things that you need to know to chase the Aurora on your own. And that can be very exciting and it can be very rewarding to do that on your own.

But taking a tour is, you know, essentially you're hiring a professional to do that homework for you. And so there's, there's a convenience factor and local knowledge. The Aurora can be seen it just about anywhere. It doesn't matter if you're, one mile this way or one mile that way, but it does matter if there's trees blocking your view to the north and northeast or if there's mountains or if there's city lights.

And so, you know, a tour will get you to the spots that are optimal. As far as things you, you want a clear view to the north and northeast horizon as much as possible. Mm-hmm. So you want to not have mountains or trees or city lights blocking your view to that direction. If the aurora's bright and high in the sky, it doesn't matter much, but if it is lower in the sky, things like that can block it.

Yep. And so convenience, safety, and a local knowhow. And so, yep. I always recommend, you know, the, it a tour's not necessarily for everyone, but everybody can learn some local knowledge from taking a tour. So if you're a person that you know, is maybe a little uncomfortable driving on winter road conditions and, in an unfamiliar area without, you know, there's not a lot of, road.

There, we don't have a lot of streetlights and things like that. It can be kind of intimidating. Absolutely. A recommended tour just about every time that you try. But you can also use it as a resource. We try to teach people on our tour, you know, how the sausage is made, so to speak. Yeah. So we let you in on what we're doing.

Yeah. And in this age of information, you know, everybody has information and not all, it's not always correct. So what our guides do is we let you in on the process and the chase. Yep. Yep. And so we're explaining from the time we pick you up, hey, this is what we're looking at. The, here's the SolarWind data, here's what the cloud models are showing, here's what the cameras are showing real time.

And so we're gonna go to this spot for this reason. And. And show people what that process is. Yeah. And so that can be really enlightening for somebody to then use that information and try it on their own and have that excitement of discovery on their own. Yeah. The other thing is photography for a tour.

So, yeah. Night photography's a little bit different than daytime photography and it requires, some knowledge of the camera settings and use of a tripod. And it also requires cameras that have are able to perceive , light. Better and lenses, especially in low light conditions.

And , photography is included on, on most tours that you'll take. And so the photography aspect, not just to get a photo, which that can be a really great keepsake, but if you're interested in photography, and let's say you're not a seasoned astrophotographer , you can learn a little bit and learn some basic photography skills to then take photos on your own.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna add one other fringe benefit, maybe not so fringe, which is having someone help you stay awake until four in the morning. Well, that's, so we'll give you a wake up call. Yeah, you can, you can sleep. You just elbow you in the Yeah. Wake up. Yeah. And so the. That's definitely a, most people are not used to being up that late at night.

And so it, it does require a certain amount of perseverance, it's not always, we can't just turn it on. And you're not always just gonna have a bright light show at 9:30 PM and be in bed at 11. You know, it, you, it does require perseverance some nights and sometimes multiple nights.

Yeah. We get folks all the time who have tried at different places all around the world and not seen it. And sometimes it's their eighth try. Yeah. Before they actually see it. And then we get others that we pick 'em up from the hotel and the aurora's going so crazy that we don't really want to drive while that's happening, and we'll just get to the quickest dark space possible and boom, it's like.

20 minutes into the tour, we're witnessing a beautiful aurora. Yeah. Yeah. So it's really the luck of the draw. Yeah. With what the sun's doing. But a tour will maximize your chances. It'll provide a safe environment and it'll hopefully, teach you and start you on your path to, chasing on your own.

Yeah. We get people coming back year after year too, though. Yeah. That, it's different every night too. It's like, yeah. And then one night is not correlated to the next you can have very similar forecast for the Aurora and on two consecutive nights and one night's great. And one night's more mild or vice versa.

And Yes. And so I recommend trying multiple times. Yeah. And as many times as it takes really. To see what you're looking for. Yeah. Okay, so before we start wrapping up Steve, I gotta tell you and everybody, 'cause it's kind of funny the, to the short toque story. So folks who listen to this podcast, and I know you know this, know that I work as a tour director in the summer and I work for another company.

So it's not like you can book through me. That's not how it works. But anyway, so one of the tours that I do is a 12 day tour that goes around Alaska and the Yukon. And , last year I did the last tour of the season, which is actually my favorite even though it rains a lot. And so the guests in, some of 'em are from Australia and New Zealand and Canada and the US and everybody was really excited.

Like they told me when they first met me at the hotel that they were super excited about trying to see the Aurora. So we talked through. You know, some basics about that. And I told them, I'm like you're gonna have a lot of good chances, you know, 'cause we're gonna be in Fairbanks for two nights and Dawson City for two nights, Whitehorse for two nights and toque.

And I'm like, yeah. You know, toque isn't necessarily an exciting destination, but it's a pretty good place to see the Aurora actually. It's a great place. Yeah. Because it's dark and it's it's, under the o you know, it's in a good position. Clear lots, not very dry there. It's in the interior away from the ocean and so it has a lot of clear nights.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, so we were on, and we have some other places on the tour as well, but and it's the end of August, right? So it's not, there are not very many hours in August that you can see the Aurora, you know, it's kind of like Steve was saying, you're not giving yourself a lot of dark.

Hours to have a, anyway, so in Fairbanks like half the group set, set alarms were getting up all night. Some of them sauna were in Fairbanks. That was awesome. We got to Dawson and it was cloudy. But some of them got up and looked anyway, but they missed it. By the time we got to Whitehorse, they had like dialed in this system of like passing around an as, you know, an assignment of like anyone who wanted their door knocked on in like the middle of the night, Uhhuh.

So they took turns, like some of the, 'cause we're, you know, 10 days into this tour at this point. So they you know, like one person would get up at 11 and if there was an Aurora, they would wake up everybody else. Then another person would get up at 12. So they had this whole system

then our last night in Whitehorse, a bunch of them had booked a tour in Whitehorse. And even though it was perfectly clear and. Like they didn't see in Aurora. Yeah. But they had a great time. So at this point they're like, hopefully a lot of stars too. Yes, they did see a lot of stars. Yes.

They had, they loved the trip. Right. The tour, even though they didn't see in Aurora, so at this point they've been staying up until like two or three in the morning, and then we've been hitting the road at like seven. Yeah. And so by the, by that last day, most of them hadn't seen one, a few had in Fairbanks.

And they're just like they're a little sad, but they're too tired to care anymore. Uhhuh, when we were in Toke, it was gonna be completely clear. And I tried to amp them up. I'm like, you should, you know, wake each other up and whatever. And they're like, no, Jennie, we're too exhausted. Yeah. Okay. So our driver and I decided to put a time lapse phone, just an iPhone on top of the coach. Um, and we did, and we caught this amazing aurora, uh, in the middle of the night Absolutely. When everyone was sleeping. And so when we, when we got on the bus in the morning, we were like, there was a great Aurora last night.

I'm like, what? That kills me. Yeah. It was just classic. But the TimeLapse video is cool. Yeah, that's great. Perseverance. Perseverance. Yeah. I know. Like, just gotta do one more night's. Definitely. Because then we were like in Valdez then, so of course it was clouding in Valdez and anyway,

so it's a great place. Yeah, it is. It's okay. So listeners, before we, before I ask Steve a couple questions to wrap up today, I just wanted to let you know that his company Great Land Adventures, so it's great Land adventures.com. I'll put it in the show notes. He is offering you listeners a 10% discount on the Northern, not just the Northern Lights tours that they offer in both Anchorage and Fairbanks, but also Matus Glacier and other tours.

So the code you wanna use for that is Alaska uncovered 10, and I'll put that in the show notes as well. So Steve, thanks for offering that to everybody. That's super cool. Absolutely. We're a real fan of what, of what you're doing and yeah, we're, we're, we're happy to offer that for your listeners. Well, thank you.

And yes, so take advantage of that, everybody. Alright, so before we wrap up today, Steve I know you live in Anchorage, but I also know you spend a lot of time in Fairbanks. I always like to ask people, and I know I asked you last time, but I don't remember what your answer was, which is okay. 'cause you can have a different one.

What's your favorite restaurant in either Anchorage or Fairbanks? Uh, I, I'll give you both, so. Okay. Um, that sounds good. Yeah. In Anchorage. I'm not sure if I answered this the last time, but I'm just such a fan of Matt, the owner and what they're doing at Ginger in Anchorage. So Ginger's my favorite restaurant in Anchorage.

It's just a great ambiance. Yep. And I just have the utmost respect for Matt the owner. He's a guy who just really cares and yeah. It's a cool vibe there at Ginger and Grapefruit. Love it. And then in Fairbanks, it's Jazz Bistro on fourth and so yes, that's, uh, Cuban Latin Tapis. Yep. Uh, yeah. And so Jazz Bistro on fourth and Fairbanks is my favorite place in Fairbanks.

Love it. Okay, last but not least, Steve, before I let you go, what is one piece of advice you have for folks coming to Alaska for the first time? Oh, okay. One piece of advice for folks coming to Alaska for the first time. You, you know, I think it depends on the time of year and what you're doing, but I think one piece of advice for anybody coming to Alaska or any traveling anywhere in life is to, to really kind of check your expectations at the door and try to be in the moment and absorbing things in real time and be present, and be in the moment, I think in general, in life and when you're traveling and it, it'll leave you more open to things that you might miss when you are, have certain expectations or, or certain rigid plans.

Be, yeah, be flexible and be in the moment, I would say. Yeah. And dress and, and, layered clothing. Yes. Warm, warm layers. One, one sort of emotional piece of advice and one very practical one. Love it. Well, yeah. Open mind and warm layers. Yes. Love it. Well, Steve, thank you so much for  📍 coming back to the podcast, and sharing all this with us today.

It's been a real pleasure, Jennie. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I.

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Jennie Thwing Flaming

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Jay Flaming

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