Northern lights photography is inherently difficult. Trust me, I’ve tried my hand at it twice. It takes a lot of technical mastery of your gear and an even better understanding of the night sky to get it right. But don’t worry, if you read this post, you’ll know everything you need to and more to guarantee you capture the Aurora.
I first got into photography in 2016 from seeing photos of the Northern Lights on Chris Burkard’s Instagram. At that point, I was 17 years old and didn’t even have my own camera. Regardless, I convinced my parents to take me to Norway to try Northern Lights Photography.
And, as I’m sure you can guess, I didn’t get any great shots. In fact, I only saw the northern lights for a total of 10 minutes. While I did capture them successfully, the image was anything but extraordinary. I could have stopped there and said my bucket list item was complete. But no, I would not let that be the end of my journey.
Over the next few years, I practiced my photography endlessly. I spent as much time as I can learning the ins and outs of my camera and perfecting my editing style. Finally, for my birthday in 2022, I headed back to Norway with a newfound skill. more confidence and better planning. Let’s just say it went well.
In this guide, I’m going to show you everything that I learned along the way so you don’t make the same mistakes I did.
What Are The Northern Lights?
The only way to win a fight is to know your enemy inside and out. And when it comes to aurora chasing, no words hold more truth. In order to find and photograph such an elusive display, you need to fundamentally understand how it works.
I apologize in advance for the long science lesson, but I, for one, find it fascinating and I hope you can too. Plus, you know I’m all about about learning!
Step 1: Inside the Sun
It all starts inside the sun. There, the nuclei of hydrogen atoms collide and bond to create helium in a process called nuclear fusion. During the process, an enormous amount of energy is released in the form of heat and light.
You can think of it as the engine of the sun. A really, really powerful engine. In fact, there’s enough heat produced during fusion that matter turns into plasma, which continues to expand as the temperature rises.
At the same time, the sun’s gravity works against this expansion, pulling the plasma back towards its center. It’s like a massive game of tug of war.
Step 2: The Solar Wind
For the most part, these two forces are kept at bay. However, sometimes, the sun’s gravity can’t contain the plasma. When this happens, the energy is released from the sun’s gravitational bind and hurls towards Earth in an endless stream of charged particles called the solar wind.
This solar wind is always present, although its strength changes based on a few factors. The most important of which is the polarity of the Sun. As the polarity of the sun slowly changes, so too does the strength of the solar wind. In addition, this change causes temperature imbalances on the surface of the Sun known as sunspots, which allow more particles to escape into the solar wind.
Step 3: Back On Earth
Meanwhile, here on Earth, the metal in the Earth’s core spins as the Earth rotates, causing a magnetic field to appear around our planet. And since plasma is made up of charged particles, when the solar wind reaches Earth, the field deflects the particles to the magnetic poles.
As the particles collide with different elements in the atmosphere, energy is released in the form of light. Different particles at different altitudes cause different colors. Nitrogen causes red and blue, while oxygen causes the famous green/yellow hues. Hence, the more solar wind, the more collisions and the more colors.
Auroral Oval
Interestingly, the magnetic poles of the Earth are not perfectly aligned with the geographic poles. For this reason, the aurora is exists as an oval centered around the 60-75 degree mark above or below the equator. This is why places like Norway, Iceland, Alaska and Canada are some of the best places to see the Northern Lights.
Forecasting The Northern Lights
From our little science lesson above, we know that the aurora is nothing more than a stream of charged particles from the sun. But how do we see them in person?
Long Term Predictions of the Northern Lights
Sadly, we can’t accurately measure the solar winds more than 30 mins in advance. However, we are able to make an estimate of the Aurora’s strength based on the current observed display and solar wind. In reality, this lets scientists predict the lights fairly accurately within a 30-90 minute window.
The exception is when there is a solar storm. On such occasions, forecasts provide a viewing window ranging anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks.
Realistic Expecations
Still, in my experience, we could only trust a forecast around 30 minutes in advance.
Understanding Northern Lights forecasts: NOAA Guide and KP Index
To make matters worse, there’s really only 1 reliable website when it comes to Northern Lights forecasts. While you can try other sites out, I can assure you that NOAA is your best bet.
NOAA is a government agency that specializes in providing accurate environmental science data. And from my experience, it is as accurate as it gets, which unfortunately, isn’t saying much. Even NOAA can be wrong, as these are just predictions at the end of the day.
Regardless, NOAA boasts the most in-depth aurora forecasting tools out there, offeringa lot of metrics for your interpretation.
What NOAA Offers
The Best Metric for Northern Lights Photography: KP Index
When it comes to Northern Lights photography (or any other viewing for that matter), KP-Index is the absolute best metric to use to predict the strength of the aurora. The KP-Index is a measure of disturbance in the geomagnetic field.
A higher KP signifies more disturbance, which subsequently leads to a larger activity area for the display. The largest KP indexes can have active fields that stretch as far south as the northern US like Seattle or Minnesota.
And although KP is related to Northern Lights strength, it’s not the end all be all. In actuality, as long as you are under the auroral oval on a given night, you have the chance to see amazing displays. Even a KP as low as 1 can be brilliant.
For your reference, on my second trip to Norway, I saw displays ranking anywhere from a KP1 to a KP5. In fact, after seeing the lights for 10 days in a row, I only really went out seriously if it was a KP3 or higher. On the other hand, locals won’t even be impressed unless the KP breaks 5.
Chasing The Northern Lights
There’s limited locations on Earth for good Northern Lights photography. But, given what we know so far, we can set ourselves up for a successful mission.
Finding Darkness
We have already established that the Northern Lights only consistently occur in latitudes 60-75 degrees. But it’s not as easy as just flying to the Arctic Circle. You need to go during the right season.
This is mainly due to the nature of sunlight in the far north. During summer, the sun literally never sets, meaning there is no night sky to observe.
Conversely, during winter, the sun doesn’t rise, which optimally dark skies for the best viewing.
Light Pollution and Clear Skies
As with any journey to stargaze, light pollution and clouds can obstruct your view of the Northern Lights.
To avoid any obstructions, be sure to get far away from any civilization on a day with no clouds.
Best Months to Photograph the Northern Lights
Summer in the Arctic Circle lasts until late August, while winter lasts until April. Depending on what you want out of your trip, picking a time frame will vary.
The father away you go from the winter equinox (Dec 21), the shorter the nights are. The months of September to November (or February to April) will still have a few hours of daylight, while December is almost completely dark.
During these months, there’s a great balance of daylight for sightseeing and night for Northern Lights Photography/Viewing. And, on the bright side, it’s slightly warmer at that time.
If all you want is to see the Northern Lights and don’t care about sightseeing during the day, then picking a time close to the equinox in December will give you the longest nights and the best viewing chances.
If all you want is to see the Northern Lights and don’t care about sightseeing during the day, then picking a time close to the equinox in December will give you the longest nights and the best viewing chances.
Northern Lights Photography: Settings and Gear
This is the fun part! And thankfully, once you find a good viewing spot, shooting the aurora is not as hard as it may seem!
Gear Matters in Northern Lights Photography
Now that we know where and when to see the show, let’s finally talk about how to get those epic photos you see on Instagram.
And I know nobody wants to hear this, but when it comes to shooting in low-light situations, your gear will make all the difference. Better sensors minimize noise at high ISO and low apertures bring in more light to the sensor.
So, without any further waiting, here’s my essential gear list. We are aiming for quality over quantity here.
Essential Gear
Optional Accesories
Focus
Focusing your camera is never easy, especially in the dark at wide open apertures that induce a shallow depth of field. In such cases, I advocate for using manual focus.
After setting up your tripod, and locking in your settings, use manual focus and set your focus to infinity. This will keep the farthest thing away from your camera, the sky, sharp.
Which, if you followed my earlier tips, will be dancing bright colors of green and red.
Camera Settings For Northern Lights Photography
Shutter: 5-20s
Some Northern Lights displays will be brighter than others. Our shutter speed need to account for this.
In general, you want the shutter speed as close to 5 seconds as possible, with a max of 20 seconds, for a smooth motion blur.
Aperture: f1.4-2.8
As a general rule of thumb, you want your aperture as wide open as possible to let in the most light.
Of course, this varies based on what lens you have, so getting a good lens is key!
ISO: 600-1,000
These days, cameras can shoot at high ISO without adding any noise. Despite this, for most cases, you won't want your ISO above 1,000.
However, this is more of a loose suggestion. It's best to experiment with your camera and see what ISO your sensor can manage.
Timelapses
A Timelapse of the Northern Lights isn’t as hard as it seems. Video is just a sequence of photos stitched together. So, in order to get a Timelapse, you just need to take a bunch of photos back to back.
In most cameras, there are shooting modes directly made for Timelapse photography. These give you control over a few different variables: time between photos, number of photos taken.
2-5 seconds is the ideal amount of space between each photo with a shutter speed between 5-10 seconds for motion blur.
As for the number of shots, it comes down to how many seconds you want the Timelapse to last for. The standard frame rate is 24 frames per second (fps) which means for every second of Timelapse, you need 24 photos.
Thus, I suggest doing a 300 photo Timelapse, which results in a little over 10 seconds of footage at 24 fps.
number of frames = fps x number of seconds
Northern Lights Photography: Final Thoughts
Go Chase Your Bucket List
By now, I’m hoping you’ve already planning your trip to see the northern lights. And if you are already booked, then enjoy!
And, if this guide helped you in any way, please let me know down in the comments and share any pictures with me. I am obsessed with northern lights photography, so I welcome any photos in my DM’s. But anyways…
When you do go to see the Northern Lights please remember this one thing: it’s not all about this technical jargon.
Because, at the end of the day, a photo is just a photo. What matters more is the experience you’ll have witnessing one of the greatest spectacles on Earth. And trust me, that memory will last a lifetime.
So, take a moment, put all your gear and electronics aside and take in the show. You won’t regret it!
