Where to Go Stargazing in June

Here's the honest answer up front: you cannot see the northern lights in June from Fairbanks, Iceland, Tromso, Abisko, or Finnish Lapland. Every one of the usual aurora bases is offline this month, and it's the emptiest month of the year for a specific, unavoidable reason.

Why you can't see the aurora in June

The far north is approaching the summer solstice around June 21, which means the sun barely dips below the horizon, if it dips at all, at the latitudes where the aurora usually puts on its best show. That's the midnight sun: continuous or near-continuous daylight that leaves no true darkness for the aurora to appear against, no matter how active the geomagnetic storm. There's nothing to book here this month, and no gear or timing trick fixes it. Check the annual aurora season calendar and come back in September.

The good news is that the exact same tilt that kills the aurora up north is what makes June extraordinary in the south. While the Arctic gets its shortest nights of the year, the Southern Hemisphere is heading into its winter solstice, and the nights down there stretch out to match. Aoraki Mackenzie in New Zealand posts 11.6 hours of usable darkness this month, a score of 3 and the longest dark window of the three months we're tracking right now. Uluru and NamibRand both hold 10.7 hours at the same top score, and the Atacama Desert is right behind at 10.6.

All four of those destinations put the galactic core high overhead for hours at a stretch, well clear of the horizon haze that ruins so many Milky Way photos elsewhere. NamibRand pairs that darkness with some of the lowest light pollution readings anywhere on the continent, and Aoraki Mackenzie backs it up with official dark-sky reserve status, so neither is a fringe pick.

The northern hemisphere still has a consolation prize: Tenerife and La Palma both hold a score of 3 with around seven hours of dark sky, enough for a solid Canary Islands trip if the long-haul south isn't realistic. Mauna Kea and Joshua Tree drop to a score of 2 as their nights shorten toward the solstice, still workable but no longer the headline pick.

Time it around the new moon, which falls near the middle of the month; check the exact date for your travel year. There's no meteor shower on the calendar this month, so the trip is entirely about darkness and the core, and this month, that darkness lives in the southern hemisphere.