Aurora tonight in Stockholm

Can you see the aurora borealis from Stockholm?

Stockholm is a step or two outside the routine aurora belt. Displays happen, but they arrive with geomagnetic activity rather than as a winter fixture.

Stockholm needs Kp 4. At magnetic latitude 59.3°N the city is well south of the routine aurora zone, so a display here means a genuine geomagnetic storm pushing the oval this far south. The city spreads across islands between a lake and the Baltic, which makes an uncluttered horizon easy to find — and makes it equally easy to end up under a light dome that reaches a long way.

Country

Sweden

Magnetic latitude

59.3°N

Geographic latitude

59.33°

Aurora threshold

Kp 4

Light pollution

Bortle 7

Deep-dark nights / yr

242

Sun at solar midnight

54.1° below horizon

Midnight sun

none

When to look: the Stockholm aurora season

Astronomical darkness returns to Stockholm around **22 Aug** and lasts until about **20 Apr** — 242 nights on which the sun reaches at least 18° below the horizon. That window is computed from Stockholm's own coordinates rather than copied from a regional rule of thumb. The counter-season is just as clearly defined: from about **21 Apr** to **21 Aug** (123 nights) the sun never gets 18° below the horizon, so the sky never reaches full darkness, and between roughly 11 May and 1 Aug it does not get properly dark at all — no display, however strong, is visible in that stretch.

The nights here do get genuinely dark — the sun bottoms out 54.1° below the horizon in midwinter. But for roughly 21 Apr to 21 Aug it never gets that low, and the sky stays too bright for anything but the strongest displays. The season is therefore defined by dark nights, not by calendar dates.

Where to go in Stockholm

The northern and north-eastern fringes of the built-up area are the practical choice: the city falls away behind you and the view opens out over water or open ground.

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 Stockholm?

Here is what each Kp value would actually put in Stockholm's sky — the row that matters is the one at Kp 4, which is where this city's magnetic latitude of 59.3° places its threshold:

At Bortle class 7, Stockholm's own light is the biggest single obstacle between the forecast and what you actually see. A Kp 4 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 Stockholm

The score above is built from five weighted factors, each using Stockholm's own figures rather than a regional default: Kp against a local threshold of 4 (35%), cloud cover averaged across the dark hours at 59.33°, 18.07° (25%), moon illumination (15%), this latitude's astronomical darkness window (15%) and Bortle 7 light pollution (10%). The method, its data sources and its known limitations are documented on our methodology page. No signup, no app, no account — the page computes everything in your browser from NOAA and Open-Meteo directly. Anonymous analytics and Google's advertising script are the only third parties involved, and both are set out on our privacy page.