Northern Lights
The biggest obstacle to capturing the aurora is actually finding it in the night sky in the first place, but there are a plethora of apps that will point you in the right direction
The aurora borealis is nature’s greatest light show and over the coming couple of winters, it’s only going to get stronger. The sun has a cycle where activity increases and decreases. Solar maximum, the peak of solar activity, occurs roughly every 11 years, with the last being declared by NASA in 2014.
The main characteristic of solar maximum is the heightened number of sunspots, and these have been observed to increase during the winter of 2021 and in the aurora season of 2022. These sunspots are critical for aurora activity as it is the solar flares, or Coronal Mass Ejections (CMES), from these sunspots that expel huge volumes of helium plasma at breakneck speeds into space. Some of this plasma hits our atmosphere and excites gas particles. This reaction produces light, with the colour determined by the type of gas particle and the height – for example, green and red are both oxygen, but the green is lower and the red is higher.
The height we’re talking about here is almost unfathomable. The lights shine anywhere between 50-200km above our heads, determined by the speed and density of the plasma. The latitude at which the Northern Lights occur is measured on a Kp scale, but along this scale we also get G-rated storms. These occur when the plasma that gets caught up in our magnetic field and builds up in our magnetotail, on the opposite side to the sun, snaps back and gives us a double-dose of particles. It’s important to know that the Kp index dictates where the aurora occurs, rather than its strength.
Aurora hunting
The biggest hurdle to shooting the aurora is actually finding it. There are apps and services that can help us, such as Spaceweatherlive, Aurorawatch UK, and the ‘Aurora’ app. These give us not only data, but an understandable forecast to go with it.
Together with good space weather, we also require the combination of clear terrestrial weather and dark skies. Taking the weather forecast from the location we’re shooting and using it to help us
find clear, dark skies will put us in the right place for an aurora explosion – this research is key.
Moving on to photographing the aurora, we need to consider all we know as photographers and try not to become overwhelmed and distracted by the incredible beauty of the Northern Lights. It’s easy to forget about composition and simply shoot straight up into the sky as ‘proof ’ that we saw it. Remember that a great landscape photograph generally includes a foreground, middle-ground and background, and compose a shot accordingly. This can be easier said than done in the dark, but using one photo as reference and making an adjustment for the next is a great idea.
Raw deal
When it comes to our settings, shooting Raw (NEF) is very important to be able to make the most of our shots in post. The principle behind shooting the aurora can be likened to shooting a waterfall, in that the faster our exposure, the more detail we’ll freeze. The difference being that we’re talking about seconds, not fractions of a second. We should use the widest, fastest lens we have. My go-to lens is the Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8. I usually start at 10 secs, f/2.8 and ISO2500, then make adjustments as necessary.
For more on capturing the Northern Lights, see my book The Complete Aurora Guide for Travellers and Photographers:
https://amzn.to/3feg0fk