Aurora tonight in Belfast

Can you see the aurora borealis from Belfast?

Belfast is well outside the normal aurora zone, so a display here requires a genuinely strong geomagnetic storm — which is exactly why the sightings that do happen make the news.

Belfast needs Kp 6. Northern Ireland's latitude is similar to northern England's, but the weather is the defining factor — this is one of the cloudier corners of the UK, so a Kp 6 forecast here is worth checking against the cloud forecast before you commit to going out.

Country

United Kingdom

Magnetic latitude

54.6°N

Geographic latitude

54.60°

Aurora threshold

Kp 6

Light pollution

Bortle 7

Deep-dark nights / yr

272

Sun at solar midnight

58.8° below horizon

Midnight sun

none

When to look: the Belfast aurora season

Belfast's deep-dark season runs from about **7 Aug** to about **5 May**: 272 nights a year on which the sun sits at least 18° below the horizon and the sky is genuinely black. Those dates come out of the city's latitude and longitude, not out of a regional generalisation. The counter-season is just as clearly defined: from about **6 May** to **6 Aug** (93 nights) the sun never gets 18° below the horizon, so the sky never reaches full darkness, and between roughly 5 Jun and 6 Jul it does not get properly dark at all — no display, however strong, is visible in that stretch.

On the darkest night of the year the sun sinks to 58.8° below the horizon at Belfast — deep enough that the sky itself stops being the limiting factor. From roughly 6 May to 6 Aug the nights never reach full astronomical darkness, so the practical season is shorter than the calendar suggests.

Where to go in Belfast

The coast of County Down and the Antrim coast both offer dark northern horizons; the further from the city, the more of the display you will actually see.

Everything you are looking for is in the northern sky over the magnetic pole, so the practical requirement is simple: an unobstructed northern horizon with no artificial light in your line of sight. The "best window" shown above picks the first hour where cloud cover drops under roughly 40% while the sky here is genuinely dark.

What Kp do you need in Belfast?

The table below converts the abstract Kp index into what it actually means from Belfast, using its magnetic latitude of 54.6° and threshold of Kp 6:

At Bortle class 7, Belfast's own light is the biggest single obstacle between the forecast and what you actually see. A Kp 6 night that shows beautifully from open country shows as nothing from a lit street. When the verdict above is GO or MAYBE, budget the drive out of town into the evening.

How tonight's answer is calculated for Belfast

Five inputs produce the answer at the top of this page, and every one of them is specific to Belfast: the NOAA Kp forecast against a threshold of Kp 6 (35% of the score), cloud cover through the night at 54.60°, -5.93° (25%), the moon (15%), astronomical darkness at this latitude (15%), and light pollution at Bortle 7 (10%). The scoring method, its inputs and its failure modes are written up in full on our methodology page. No account, no app, no email address — everything above is computed in your browser from NOAA and Open-Meteo data. Anonymous analytics and Google's advertising script are the only third parties involved, both explained on the privacy page.