Aurora tonight in Edinburgh

Can you see the aurora borealis from Edinburgh?

Edinburgh 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.

Edinburgh needs Kp 5 — a G1 storm, which the sun delivers fairly often near solar maximum. The city sits on the Firth of Forth at the latitude of southern Alaska, so the northern horizon over the water is genuinely dark enough on a storm night; what you are watching for is a green glow and the occasional tall ray low over the estuary rather than the overhead curtains people picture.

Country

United Kingdom

Magnetic latitude

56°N

Geographic latitude

55.95°

Aurora threshold

Kp 5

Light pollution

Bortle 7

Deep-dark nights / yr

264

Sun at solar midnight

57.5° below horizon

Midnight sun

none

When to look: the Edinburgh aurora season

Edinburgh's deep-dark season runs from about **11 Aug** to about **1 May**: 264 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 **2 May** to **10 Aug** (101 nights) the sun never gets 18° below the horizon, so the sky never reaches full darkness, and between roughly 27 May and 16 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 57.5° below the horizon at Edinburgh — deep enough that the sky itself stops being the limiting factor. From roughly 2 May to 10 Aug the nights never reach full astronomical darkness, so the practical season is shorter than the calendar suggests.

Where to go in Edinburgh

The Firth of Forth and the coast east of the city give you water and a low northern horizon; the hills inside the city lift you above the street lighting but not above the light dome.

Your viewing direction is fixed by Edinburgh's position relative to the magnetic pole: look north, low on the horizon at first, and find somewhere that side is open and unlit. The "best window" figure above is simply the first hour tonight where cloud cover falls under roughly 40% while the sky is dark enough here to show anything.

What Kp do you need in Edinburgh?

Here is what each Kp value would actually put in Edinburgh's sky — the row that matters is the one at Kp 5, which is where this city's magnetic latitude of 56° places its threshold:

The most common reason people in Edinburgh miss a display is not a bad forecast — it is staying inside the city. At Bortle class 7, a Kp 5 event that would be obvious from open country can be completely invisible from a lit street. If the answer above says GO or MAYBE, treat the drive out of town as part of the plan rather than an optional extra.

How tonight's answer is calculated for Edinburgh

Tonight's verdict for Edinburgh weights five inputs: the live Kp forecast measured against this city's own Kp 5 threshold (35%), night-average cloud cover at 55.95°, -3.19° (25%), moon illumination (15%), the astronomical darkness window computed for this latitude (15%), and light pollution at Bortle class 7 (10%). How the score is built, where the numbers come from and where the method can go wrong are all set out on our methodology page. There is nothing to install and nothing to sign up for: the calculation runs in your browser against NOAA and Open-Meteo. The only third parties are anonymous analytics and Google's ad script — our privacy page lists what each one does.