Worth Going Out

Northern lights in Inverness in May

Scotland, United Kingdom. Figures for May 2027, calculated by us. Times are local.

Maybe

Only a short dark spell. In mid-May the sky is dark enough for the aurora from about 23:59 to 02:26, 2 hours a night.

Darkness through the month

1 May: 4.3 hours of darkness.
15 May: 2 hours.
End of May: no real darkness. The nights are getting shorter through the month.

“Dark” here means the Sun is more than 12° below the horizon. Faint aurora needs a darker sky; a strong display can show earlier in the evening.

The Moon in May 2027

New Moon: 6 May 2027. The week around it has the darkest skies.
Full Moon: 20 May 2027. A bright Moon makes the aurora look fainter, though it is still there.

What to expect

There is only a short window of darkness around the middle of the night. It is possible to catch a strong display, but this is the edge of the season.
Scotland only sees the aurora during stronger geomagnetic storms, low in the northern sky. Treat it as a bonus, not a reason to travel; watch the NOAA forecast and look north from somewhere dark.

Green and pink northern lights low over a dark horizon, partly behind clouds — The northern lights over Baltasound, Shetland, Scotland. Photo: Mike Pennington, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Get a note when it is worth going out

A short email before an eclipse, a strong meteor shower or a dark week worth planning for. No more than a few a month.

Inverness: the whole year. All northern lights destinations.

Sources

Darkness, sunrise and Moon phases: our calculation, Astronomy Engine 2.1.19 (MIT licence). How we worked it out.
NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, Tips on viewing the aurora.