The Southern Lights Are Just as Magical as the Northern Lights—and Now's the Best Time to Catch Them

Travel + Leisure

06-07-2025

While the northern lights often steal the spotlight, their southern counterpart—aurora australis—offers an equally dazzling display of its own. It paints the sky green, violet, red, but catching a glimpse requires both good luck and latitude. Like the northern lights, the southern lights are born from solar particles colliding with the Earth's magnetic field, like during a solar storm.
But unlike the northern lights, which are visible from many places in the Northern Hemisphere, the southern lights are more elusive and notoriously more difficult to see. That's largely because there's so little land near the South Pole to view it from, leaving only a handful of remote spots on Earth to experience this polar light show.
To catch the southern lights, you'll need to be positioned at high southern latitudes that are close to the magnetic South Pole. And for the best view of the lights, you'll want to be in a place with low humidity and long, dark nights (factors that also make for great stargazing). Places like Antarctica, Tasmania, and New Zealand sometimes offer glimpses of the elusive southern lights, but one of the most compelling places to witness the celestial event is in Patagonia, the mountainous expanse that straddles southern Argentina and Chile.
The Andes Mountains that sprawl across much of Patagonia, and act as the dividing line between Argentina and Chile, offer the right latitude to catch the southern lights' colorful dance along with spectacular viewing conditions and a mountainous backdrop. The phenomenon is most visible during the austral winter, from May through August, when the nights are long and dark. Amid Patagonia's stark beauty and solitude, the southern lights often reveal themselves—quietly and brilliantly.
Most southern-lights-seekers come to Patagonia via Ushuaia, Argentina, which is sometimes called 'the end of the world' and is part of the southernmost and least populated Argentine province. Ushuaia provides access to Tierra del Fuego National Park and is the starting point for many Antarctica cruises, which is another great place to catch the lights.
With 'noctourism'—the growing interest in after-dark travel experiences—emerging as one of 2025's leading trends, many travelers are setting their sights on the aurora borealis. But the more elusive prize lies farther south. According to Booking.com's annual travel predictions, more than half of American travelers are now considering destinations with darker skies in hopes of stargazing or catching a cosmic spectacle.
In Patagonia, where the night stretches and the landscape remains blissfully unspoiled, the dream of rare nocturnal discovery feels closer—and infinitely more magical.