26/02/2026
The world’s first permanent northern lights observatory occupies a small stone building atop Mount Halde in Norway. Built in 1899 by Kristian Birkeland, a physicist and Arctic explorer, the observatory was an aerie from which scientists of the early 20th century could study the auroras that shimmered and blazed across the Arctic skies at night.
Norway is widely regarded as the birthplace of auroral research; it was there that auroras were scientifically observed, analyzed and photographed. As the Danish writer Erik Johan Jessen wrote in 1763: In Norway, “the northern lights in great measurement have their home.”
Living on the windswept Halde in winter was arduous, and in 1926, research was shifted west to Tromso, where measurements of solar events and Earth’s magnetic field continue.
But this summer, a century after the original observatory closed, a sophisticated new radar system is expected to begin operating in Skibotn, a town partway between Tromso and Halde, where an array of 10,000 antennas will probe Earth’s upper atmosphere to try to provide a detailed understanding of auroras and space weather.
From the New York Times 27 February 2026
