Photo Copyright: Yongyut Kumsri
Few displays in the phenomenal world compare in sheer mystery and ethereal beauty to auroras. These shimmering nocturnal light shows, caused by the interaction of charged solar particles with Earth’s atmosphere, captivate not just for their sheer visual effect, but also their fleetingness and short-notice eruptions.
Photo Copyright: Siraphat Thanyaphuriwat
Plenty of technical challenges face the photographer hoping for a killer shot of the aurora borealis, the Northern Hemisphere’s share of aurora phenomena (commonly called the “Northern Lights”). But the best techniques for photographing a display don’t mean much if you can’t get yourself to an optimum location. In this article, we’ll run down five of the most consistently promising locations for glimpsing and capturing these heavenly extravaganzas.
Photo Copyright: Johann Ragnarsson
Top Locations
All the spots profiled below are in the Far North, all offer nighttime skies remote from city lights and cold, clear winter conditions ideal for the choicest viewing. The aurora borealis is most pronounced between late September and late March, when nights are longest in the Northern Hemisphere.
Tracking the auroral oval, the zone of peak auroral activity at any given time, is more feasible than ever given the numerous websites monitoring solar activity, such as NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.
Photo Copyright: burben – 123rf.com
Alaska
America’s Last Frontier is an excellent place to view the Northern Lights. Not only do you have wilderness on a vast scale and plenty of frigid winter darkness, but the state’s also part of a region (along with the rest of boreal North America) globally favored for auroras because of the current proximity of Earth’s migratory North Magnetic Pole.
Fairbanks is the perfect jumping-off point for Alaskan aurora photo safaris: the wild bush awaits beyond the city limits, and meanwhile you’ve got plenty of services, including organized Northern Lights tours on hand in town.
Canada
Canada shares Alaska’s aurora-viewing virtues. Seemingly endless subarctic backcountry promises deliciously dark skies smack-dab in the standard auroral oval, and farflung towns provide everything you need to arrange and outfit your trip. Much of the country furnishes decent front-row seats for auroras, but some particularly good hubs include Yellowknife, Yukon; Whitehorse, Northwest Territories; and Churchill, Manitoba.
Sweden
Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia likely offer Europe’s all-around best accessible aurora-photography opportunities. And one especially celebrated place in Lapland is the Blue Hole of Abisko, an area around Lake Tornetrask where a mountain buffer creates a microclimate of reliably clear skies.
Photo Copyright: Strahil Dimitrov
Norway
Norway’s Arctic north provides another outstanding destination for grabbing award-worthy Northern Lights images. As the country’s official tourism website notes, aurora hotspots extend from the Lofoten Islands poleward to the North Cape and Svalbard archipelago. The region’s largest city, Tromsø, is a famous mecca for aurora-viewing.
Russia
As in Canada, you’ve certainly got a limitless supply of howling winter wilderness on hand in Russia. That said, if middle-of-nowhere Siberia is too logistically intimidating, try the Kola Peninsula jammed against Scandinavia. Murmansk, like Tromsø, gives you an Arctic metropolis conveniently situated in prime aurora territory.
Photo Copyright : Andrey Lavrov
Aurora Basics
Here’s an aurora primer: The Sun issues a stream of plasma (charged particles) out into the solar system in the form of the “solar wind.” Washing over Earth, its protons and electrons sweep along the planet’s geomagnetic field to the magnetic poles, where, through collisions, they “excite” atmospheric atoms and molecules into higher energy states. As those atoms and molecules then “relax” to a lower energy state, they release photons—light particles that produce the auroras.
Because of their polar habitat, auroras are most consistently seen in the high latitudes. When the Sun’s particularly active, as during a solar storm, aurora displays may be visible well outside their normal realm, even in equatorial areas.
More about night photography: Great Nighttime Photography Tips