It begins with our star
The solar wind carries charged particles and a magnetic field through space.
The science. The stories. The feeling.
Some lights explain the sky.
These ones change how I feel.
I’m Abhishek Roy. Based in Amsterdam, curious about the world, and repeatedly drawn back to the north. Where’s Roy? is my travel journal, my aurora planning desk, and an invitation to look up.
Why I keep coming back
There is a feeling I keep trying to bring home from the northern skies. Standing beneath a moving sky, I stop needing the evening to be anything else. I feel peaceful. Present. Very small, in the nicest possible way.
At first, the lights were a question: is that cloud, a grey streak, or something extraordinary? Then came the nights when there was no question at all. The sky moved. The waiting, the cold, the driving, all of it became part of a memory I wanted to keep.
I love the science, but I love the stories around it too. A fox throwing sparks into the dark. Swans beating frozen wings. A child told to stand quietly beneath the lights. Across the north, people looked at the same sky and found different ways to hold its mystery.
This website is my way of sharing that feeling without pretending I can promise it. You’ll find my journeys, the places that stayed with me, camera starting points and a planner built around the things that matter: a dark sky, a gap in the clouds, an open road and a little patience.
Sometimes the best thing I can say is: stay close, stay warm, and wait. Sometimes it is: don’t drive tonight. The lights are worth chasing. They are also worth coming home from.
— Roy
From our star to your sky
What is actually happening up there?
The Sun sends a continuous solar wind through space. Changes in that flow and its magnetic field can transfer energy into Earth’s magnetosphere. Energy stored on the night side can accelerate charged particles, especially electrons, down magnetic field lines. High above us, those particles collide with atmospheric gases. The gases release the extra energy as light.
Earth gathers the energy
Interaction with Earth’s magnetic field transfers energy. The night side stores and releases it.
The atmosphere answers
Accelerated particles follow magnetic field lines. Collisions excite gases, which release light.
Red oxygen · higher layersGreen oxygen · middle layersBlue and violet nitrogen
A conceptual journey, not to scale. Auroral ovals surround the magnetic poles in both hemispheres.
Watch the journey · 24 seconds
From a star to a dancing sky.
A short animated journey from the solar wind to the colours above us.
Read the video transcript
- The solar wind carries particles and magnetic fields through space.
- Interaction with Earth’s magnetosphere transfers energy and can accelerate particles along magnetic field lines.
- Collisions excite gases high in the atmosphere. Oxygen produces green and red emissions; nitrogen contributes blue and violet.
- Changes in energy, gas and altitude shape the shifting curtains that we see from the ground.
The auroral oval is centred on the magnetic poles, which are offset from the geographic poles. It changes shape and expands with activity. Aurora is possible in both hemispheres; the southern lights are the aurora australis. A storm can make the viewing region broader, but darkness and a clear line of sight still decide what you can see.
Why the colours change
| Colour | Typical origin |
|---|---|
| Green | Excited oxygen, commonly around 100–200 km. |
| Red | Oxygen higher in the atmosphere, often above 200 km. |
| Blue / violet | Nitrogen and molecular nitrogen ions; colour depends on energy and height. |
| Pink / purple lower edges | Nitrogen emissions and mixtures of colours, sometimes below about 100 km. |
Approximate layers, not fixed boundaries. Mixed emissions, brightness, exposure and human colour vision all affect appearance.
Why my camera sees more
In dim light, our eyes rely strongly on light-sensitive rods, which do not give us the colour detail that cones do. A faint aurora may look grey or pale green. A camera can gather light for several seconds and record much richer colour.
Bright displays can be vividly coloured to the eye. A saturated photograph does not tell you exactly how the night looked to someone standing there.
Make your first photographWhen should I look?
Look during dark nights, with an open view and gaps in the clouds. Around the Arctic, the long bright summer nights hide displays that may still be happening. Autumn to spring offers the useful dark season. Activity is often favourable near magnetic midnight, but displays can begin earlier or later: do not treat a clock time as an appointment.
Kp describes global geomagnetic disturbance over a three-hour interval. It is not a local visibility percentage. The auroral oval, local cloud, the height of the Sun, moonlight and fast-changing magnetic conditions each tell a different part of the story.
Stories told beneath the same sky
Before the instruments, there were stories.
These are documented examples of folklore, not scientific explanations or beliefs shared by everyone in a country. Sápmi crosses modern national borders. Sámi communities, languages and traditions are diverse; a single tourist story cannot speak for them all.
Finland · the fox fires
The Finnish word revontulet means fox fires. One telling imagines a fox running across the fells, its fur or tail scattering sparks into the night. Another version has snow catching the moonlight. It turns a silent landscape into something alive.
Sweden · the swans of Småland
An old regional story describes swans competing to fly furthest north. Frozen into the sky, they beat their wings to free themselves; their struggle becomes the lights. It is a local tale, not a belief to assign to every Swede.
Norway & Sápmi · respect the lights
Accounts from northern Scandinavia describe children being told to behave quietly beneath the aurora. Whistling at or teasing it could be dangerous in some tellings. These stories convey respect for a powerful sky; they should not be flattened into a universal “Sámi myth”.
Iceland · a sky full of questions
Historical Icelandic folklore includes ideas linking the lights with weather, omens and childbirth. A childbirth superstition warned against looking at them. That is folklore, not medical advice. The surviving tales vary and do not all match the more familiar mainland Nordic stories.
A little bedtime reading · my retellings
The short scenes below are new retellings inspired by the documented motifs above, not quotations or claims to reproduce a traditional text.
The fox: Across the white fell ran a fox who did not know it carried a night sky in its tail. Each turn sent a spark upward. By the time it stopped to listen, the darkness had learned to dance.
The swans: The last swan looked south, where the lake was sleeping. She beat her wings once more. A green shimmer crossed the silence, as if the sky itself had remembered the way home.
The quiet child: A child lifted a hand to call the lights closer. An older voice said, gently, “You do not have to call every beautiful thing. Sometimes you can simply watch.” So they stood together until the cold sent them home.
How we learned to ask better questions
Observation before explanation
People recorded unusual skies long before there was a physical explanation. Medieval Nordic writing considered reflections from distant fires, sunlight and ice. Careful observations gradually turned the lights from an omen into a question that could be tested.
Birkeland’s little Earth
Norwegian physicist Kristian Birkeland used magnetised spheres inside vacuum chambers and beams of electrons to investigate polar light. His terrella experiments helped connect magnetism, particles and aurora. They were a model, not a complete miniature of the natural system.
From the ground to space
Magnetometers, cameras, rockets and satellites revealed the magnetosphere as an active system. The modern picture includes solar-wind coupling, energy storage, magnetic reconnection and particles accelerated within Earth’s space environment. Forecasting is still an evolving science.
Read the science and the cultural sources
- NASA · Auroras and their colours
- NOAA SWPC · Aurora tutorial
- University of Alaska Fairbanks · Aurora FAQ
- Finnish Meteorological Institute · Northern lights
- Swedish Institute of Space Physics · Science and old beliefs
- ARV, Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 2019 · Historical Icelandic traditions
- NASA Goddard · Aurora history
The planner is an aid to comparing conditions. It does not detect aurora from camera footage and does not certify road safety.