I did two northern lights tours out of Tromsø on consecutive nights. The first one failed completely. The second one delivered, but not until eleven minutes past midnight, roughly five hours after we set off.
This is what actually happened on 18–20 September 2024, including the one factor I had not thought about at all when I booked, which turned out to matter more than cloud cover.
It follows on from the first day and a half in Tromsø.
The Thing I Got Wrong Before I Started
I booked two nights in the third week of September because that is when I was in Tromsø. What I did not check was the moon.
18 September 2024 was the full Harvest Moon — and a supermoon, at perigee, with a partial lunar eclipse. The moon reached full at 02:35 GMT that morning, about seven hours before its closest approach to Earth. In other words, I went aurora hunting on the two brightest moonlit nights of that entire month.
A full moon does not stop the aurora. It does wash out everything faint, which is most of what the aurora does most of the time. If you have any flexibility at all in your dates, check the lunar calendar before you book, and aim for the week around new moon. Nobody selling tours will mention this.
Night One: 18 September
Pick-up was from the Best Arctic booking point in the centre at half six — lavvu poles out front, firewood stacked by the door, northern lights posters in the window. Tromsø has a dozen operators running essentially the same model: a minibus, a guide watching cloud maps, and a willingness to drive as far as it takes.
Two hours later we were about 55 km south of the city at a lay-by, looking at this. That bright disc is the moon coming through broken cloud, and it was the brightest thing in the sky all night.
We stopped in three places. We saw no aurora at all. Back in town somewhere around one in the morning, cold and slightly deflated.
Worth saying plainly: that is a completely normal outcome. The tours are honest about it — you are buying a search, not a sighting.
Day Two: Killing Time in Tromsø
The next day was for recovering. Tromsø is very good at indoor afternoons, and I spent most of one in a café looking at cake I could not pronounce — Islandskake, Gubbens taffelkake, Snickerskake, all labelled for gluten and lactose.
Mismatched furniture, candles lit at two in the afternoon, reindeer hides over the chair backs, and everybody still wearing their coats indoors. This is the actual aesthetic of Arctic Norway in autumn, and it is a lot cosier than the tourist photos suggest.
15:00 — Fjellheisen, and the Cloud
In the afternoon I walked over to Tromsdalen for the Fjellheisen cable car, which climbs to the Storsteinen ledge at 421 m and is the standard Tromsø viewpoint. I never got on it. It was not running that day. You can also see the other problem in the photo: the cloud was sitting exactly where the view is supposed to be.
I got as far as the base station. The cables run up into the murk and stop being visible about a third of the way, and nothing was moving on them.
Quick facts: Fjellheisen climbs 421 m to the Storsteinen ledge and costs about 495 NOK for an adult return, 280 NOK for children 3–15; one-way is roughly 320 and 170. There is a café and a marked path network at the top.
It is usually described as running year-round, and that is true in the sense that it operates in every season. It is not true in the sense that you can turn up on any given day. It stops in high wind, and it closes completely for an annual maintenance period in autumn — in 2022 that shutdown ran from 12 September right through to 10 October. I walked up to it on 19 September and it was standing still.
So: check fjellheisen.no on the morning you intend to go, not the week before, and have a second plan for Tromsdalen. Mine turned out to be the walk back over the bridge, which is free and, on the right afternoon, nearly as good.
Night Two: 19 September
Out again the second night, and this time the bus went east instead of south — roughly 90 km from Tromsø, deep into Troms county, chasing a gap in the forecast.
At 22:19 this is what we had: moonlit cloud, a handful of stars, and a lot of people standing in a car park in thermal suits looking up.
22:49. Half an hour further in and the moon had only got brighter. At this point I had been on aurora tours for about nine hours across two nights and seen precisely nothing.
00:11 — It Finally Showed
Then it did what it does, which is arrive without warning. A green band came up out of the cloud on the northern horizon, hardened, and stretched. Stars showing through it. Everyone stopped talking.
Nineteen seconds later, wider. It was not the vertical curtain that fills the brochures — with a supermoon up, faint structure never had a chance — but it was unmistakably there, moving, and green enough to read as green with the naked eye rather than only on the camera.
That distinction matters if you are deciding whether a bright night is worth going out on at all. A lot of aurora photographs are camera-only — a long exposure pulling colour out of something that reads as thin grey cloud to the eye. This was not that. Under a full supermoon, at eleven minutes past midnight, it was green to look at, not just to photograph.
It lasted a few minutes. Then it faded back into the cloud and that was the night.
What I Would Do Differently
Check the moon before the dates. This is the big one. Aim for the ten days around new moon and you remove the single biggest handicap I gave myself.
Book two nights, minimum. One night is a coin flip. My first night was a total blank and my second only paid out after midnight. Most operators in Tromsø run some form of discounted or free repeat if you see nothing — ask about it at the booking desk before you pay for the first one, not after.
Expect to be out very late. These tours run 7–9 hours and can get back at 03:00. Do not plan anything for the following morning. Warm layers, thermal suit and boots are usually provided; hot drinks and a meal often are too. Bring your own gloves you can actually operate a phone in.
Do not judge the night at ten o’clock. Both my nights looked hopeless at 22:00. One of them turned at 00:11.
September is a real aurora month. It gets written off in favour of deep winter, but the equinox period is statistically good for geomagnetic activity, the roads are clear, and it is nowhere near as cold. You are trading darkness hours for comfort.
And if you are building a Norway route: this trip ran Bergen first, then flew north to Tromsø. Doing the fjords in daylight and the Arctic at night worked well in that order.
Tour prices, operators and departure times change, and the aurora obeys nobody. Check current conditions and forecasts before you book.
