This year is a worse year than usual to look for the northern lights.
We are now in a period just after sunspot minima, and the northern lights are closely linked to the sun's activity.
- More sunspots give greater probability for spectacular northern lights.
And right now the sun is in a calmer phase, but on its way to greater activity.
The sunspots vary in an eleven-year cycle, we have known this since the days of Galileo, says Urban Brändström at the Institute of Space Physics in Kiruna.
Greater probability 2025
The next maximum is expected in 2025 and then, at sunspot maximums and shortly after, the northern lights are statistically more common.
The Northern Lights also occur at other times, but the probability of seeing them is lower.
Especially the spectacular northern lights that are driven by the great solar eruptions, or so-called corona mass ejections.
Although the sun's activity goes in cycles, there are also more short-term changes that researchers are keeping an eye on.
Observations of the sun's activity provide a basis for models that researchers use to make forecasts.
- However, they are less accurate than normal weather forecasts, at best they can provide prospects of what it will look like three days ahead, says Urban Brändström.
Monitors the solar winds
Satellites and ground stations constantly monitor the sun's activity, to keep track of the solar winds.
The charged particles in the solar wind not only give rise to beautiful northern lights.
Space weather can also disrupt our planet's protective magnetic field and cause geomagnetic storms.
With possible power outages as a result and disturbances in GPS, telephone signals, air traffic and satellites.
The probability of seeing the Northern Lights also depends on where you are in relation to the so-called Northern Lights Oval.
The polar light, which is found in both the north and the south, occurs when charged particles from the solar wind fall towards the upper part of the earth's atmosphere.
The particles in the solar wind are affected by the earth's magnetic field and therefore hit the atmosphere along an oval around the magnetic poles.
Most common north - coolest south
Normally, the northern lights oval in Sweden is somewhere above Kiruna, so there is the greatest chance of seeing the northern lights there.
But as the sun's activity increases, the oval expands rapidly to the south, and the coolest northern lights can be seen far to the south.
During the so-called Halloween storm in 2003, during a sunspot maximum, the northern lights were seen in Scania and northern Germany, for example.
- The more energy that comes from the sun, the further the oval moves.
And then the chances of seeing the northern lights at southern latitudes increase.
At sunspot maxima, you can see an aurora borealis approximately every 30 days in Stockholm, for example, says Urban Brändström.
Want to know more about how researchers and Northern Lights hunters search for answers to the mysteries of the Northern Lights? Watch The World of Science - With the Northern Lights in mind, Monday 15 March at 20.00 on SVT2 or on SVT Play.