The northern lights have been seen from Romania. How many times since records began?

The northern lights sound like something for Lapland, not for us. Choose before you read on.

The Kp index measures, every three hours, how hard Earth's magnetic field is shaking. At 9, the aurora typically sinks to 40° magnetic latitude — and Romania sits between 40.3° and 44.9°.

The newest of them was the Gannon storm of 10–11 May 2024: Dst of −412 nT, the sixth largest since 1957, after 12 X-class flares from a single sunspot region. 696 witnesses from more than 30 countries described where they saw it — some from 30° magnetic latitude, far further south than the models predicted.

Before it came a 21-year pause: no Kp-9 storm between October 2003 and May 2024. And the first of the three Romanian nights beat the tables: in November 2023 the aurora was seen from Romania at Kp 7.33, below the level the guides say Bucharest can hope for.

The chart also holds storms with no star: January 1938, March 2015, October 2024 — all strong, all with no Romanian record found. A great storm is a chance, not an observation.

The compass does not point at the North Pole but at the magnetic pole — and the aurora follows it, not geography. Every town has its own magnetic latitude; the higher it is, the more often the curtain reaches it.

From Lapland the aurora is green and dances overhead. From Romania you only see the curtain's edge, its highest part — and up there, the only colour that survives is red.

The 557.7-nanometre green comes from oxygen atoms struck by the solar wind, 120 to 400 kilometres up. The red comes from oxygen too, but from a state that lives over 150 seconds — down low the atoms would collide and quench; only the thin air above 300 kilometres lets it glow.

That is why red curtains stand 320–480 kilometres (200–300 miles) high: in 1938 one lit the sands of the Sahara. And why photos lie a little: the phone sensor catches wavelengths the eye misses, so the picture shows more red than you saw.

No serious page tells you when the next one comes — but it can tell you where to look and when it is worth leaving the house.

• Check the live dashboard, not this page

  NOAA's 30-minute forecast shows the auroral oval live. If its green edge touches central Europe, dress warmly.

• Find darkness and a northern horizon

  Get out of town, after moonset, under a clear sky with a clear view down to the northern horizon. Clouds decide most nights.

• At Kp 7 and up, it is worth a look

  The tables ask Kp 9 for Bucharest, but November 2023 showed at 7.33. Look north for several good minutes: eyes adjust slowly to faint red.

• Photograph it, but trust your eyes

  Phone on a fence post, long exposure, and you will catch more than you see. Remember, though: the photo is redder than the night.

NOAA aurora forecast, live ↗

Eight claims about the aurora above Romania. Every answer comes with its source.

Three documented nights do not mean three nights that happened. Here is what the measurements do not say.

• A storm is not an observation

  The chart shows storms. We know Romania actually saw it only for the nights with press or footage — the rest are chances, not certainties.

• Kp–latitude tables are approximate

  Sources give different thresholds, and November 2023 beat them all: the aurora was seen from Romania at Kp 7.33.

• Clouds decide most nights

  A Kp-9 storm under an overcast sky shows from nowhere. A full Moon and city lights wipe out the faint red too.

• Before phones, nights went unrecorded

  The May 2024 storm was the first of its size in the era of good camera phones. How many of the earlier 22 were seen from Romania with no record left we will never know.

• Magnetic latitude drifts slowly

  The magnetic pole wanders, so the table values are for the 2025 epoch. Over a human lifetime the change is small.