Learn How to See the Northern Lights

We always hear about Montanans seeing the Northern Lights and see all of these amazing pictures of the phenomenon in our social media scrolls, but my family can never seem to see it ourselves. We've gone to remote locations, dark places in Northern Montana, and can never see it. So we're planning to watch this hour long presentation to get tips on how to see Aurora Borealis the next time there is an opportunity. And, if we still can't find them, we can watch online. Certainly not as exciting, but we're used to watching livestreams because of the pandemic.

Delta College in California will be hosting a free course on Facebook Live on Thursday, January 21st at 5 p.m. local time. The college's Astronomer and Planetarium Manger, Mike Murray, will share and explore what causes the Northern Lights, and how best to observe them. The college will also provide links to webcams that you can watch when activity is high. They do warn that other pages claim to host this event and try to charge a fee, so don't be duped into that, here is the official host page for the event. That's also the link you'll use when the event goes live.

As for us here in Montana, the peak times to experience Aurora Borealis are in winter, late fall, and early spring at about midnight to 1 a.m. And since we can't afford a trip to Sweden/Finland/Norway and probably won't be vacationing in Alaska, we'll take the course and keep trying to see the Northern Lights here at home.