NASA Predicts 2012 will be the Best Year to View the Northern Lights

NASA has predicted that 2012 will bring the brightest displays of the northern lights in 50 years. Since 2007, NASA has been monitoring the aurora borealis’s intensity grow year after year and has said that next year the lights will be at their brightest and most dramatic.

The spectacle will happen due to a Solar Maximum, a period when the suns magnetic field lines have become distorted due to the magnetic field on the solar equator rotating at a slightly quicker speed that the solar poles, thus creating a period of greater solar activity than normal.

The cycle between Solar Maximums take an average of 11 years- varying between 9 to 14 years. The last Solar Maximum was in 2000 and NASA experts have predicted that 2012 will bring the greatest seen since 1958.

You can view the Northern Lights in the skies above the Arctic and Sub-arctic regions. Hurtigruten, the arctic regions leading cruise line, offer many voyages to the Northern Lights during the winter months.

Read More: Northern Lights Cruises