If you missed the recent spectacle of the Northern Lights (or Northern Lights, as they’re called in the Northern Hemisphere), fear not: we could be about to repeat it during the week beginning June 3.
Although there are absolutely no guarantees, the part of the sun that caused a G5 geomagnetic storm (the strongest since 2003) last month has come back facing Earth. And the good news is that it is still active.
According to NASA, sunspot AR3697 (formerly known as AR3664) triggered a Class X solar flare, rated at X1.4, on May 29. Auroras are caused by the acceleration of the solar wind along the field lines of our planet’s magnetosphere, which is Earth’s armor against charged particles thrown into space by the sun.
The solar wind and auroras are caused by what astronomers call coronal mass ejections (CMEs), clouds of charged particles that can be thrown into space from the sun following a solar flare.
However, when an active region faces Earth, a window of opportunity for auroras opens. The sun rotates every 27 days, so June 6 it is exactly one solar cycle since the May 10 display. Coincidentally, it’s the date of the new moon, which means dark skies at night.
This means that, weather permitting, there could be opportunities to see and photograph the Northern Lights a few days before then. Here’s how to stay on top of potential opportunities and prepare to photograph them with a camera or phone…
5 Steps to Planning Northern Lights Photos
1. Check the conditions
Who are you counting on to tell you that a huge geomagnetic storm is about to occur? It’s social media – but you have to be very careful. There is a lot of misinformation and bigoted social media accounts surrounding the Northern Lights.
If you hear the words “deadly shot” or any talk of the Earth’s weak magnetic field, run a mile. Count only on expert solar physicists and aurora chasers who do this as a career and passion.
Here are the best websites and X (formerly Twitter) feeds to follow for up-to-the-minute information on incoming space weather:
The best sites and applications
The Best Social Media Accounts to Follow
- Dr. Ryan French (@RyanJFrançais): British solar astrophysicist at the National Solar Observatory and author of The Sun: A Beginner’s Guide to Our Local Star.
- Sarah Housseal (@SNHWx), Operational Space Wx forecaster and meteorologist at Johns Hopkins University and a master’s student at Millersville University.
- Vincent Ledvina (@Vincent_Ledvina): “The Aurora Guy,” aurora photographer in Alaska and doctoral student in space physics at the UAF Geophysical Institute.
In addition to a reliable warning of incoming space weather, you’ll also need clear skies. If there are clouds, the strength of the geomagnetic storm doesn’t matter: you won’t see anything. So consult the best travel and weather appssuch as Windyfor the latest guidance.
2. Find the right location
Although hours of darkness are rare in the northern latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, it is wise to have a place in mind to drive to at midnight, in case strong auroras are forecast.
A good place to consult before any other is the Find a dark place on the DarkSky website, which details all certified international Dark Sky locations. These include protected lands and night skies in 22 countries on six continents, from Arches National Park in Utah and Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania to Aoraki Mackenzie in New Zealand and Elan Valley in central Wales.
However, you don’t need to go somewhere with sheltered skies: anywhere around 40 miles from a city should have reasonably dark skies. A light pollution map And GoStargazing are both useful for locating pockets of darkness.
Remember that it doesn’t get dark until midnight in mid-northern latitudes in June. This will make a difference in narrowing the window of opportunity each night. For example, the aurora was spotted before midnight on May 10 in the United Kingdom. If a powerful geomagnetic storm hits again this week in early June, it will be after midnight that the aurora becomes visible.
3. Plan your shot
When the auroras appear in the sky, it’s tempting to just take a photo. Any photo, just to prove you saw it. This is completely understandable, but it’s not the way to take a memorable image of an aurora. Go look at all the news articles about the Northern Lights and you’ll find that most of them include landscapes or people. Or both.
If you have time to think about where you might photograph the aurora, try placing something interesting in the foreground, such as the silhouette of a gnarled tree, a building, or a lake (for reflections). , or a crowd of people. people watch the aurora.
It is wise to think about the direction of the dawn. Typically, they appear in an oval around the Arctic or Antarctic circles. If a geomagnetic storm is particularly strong, this oval extends toward more southerly latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere and two latitudes farther north in the Southern Hemisphere.
This means that the Northern Lights are usually visible in the northern sky and the Southern Lights in the southern sky. This is something to remember when planning a shoot – and this is where planning apps like PhotoPills, The photographer’s ephemeris And Pro plan be useful. However, the fact is that the geomagnetic storm on May 10 was so strong that auroras were visible to the south in the north of the United Kingdom.
Dark skies aren’t everything. Auroras are captured using long exposures of a few seconds or more – depending on their brightness – so it is possible to photograph them in cities. The May exhibitions proved it. It is also true that post-production can be used to remove the unwanted effects of excessive sky glare.
You may actively want to photograph the aurora in an unexpected location, like a city. However, it is best to avoid bright light sources, such as street lamps, security lights and always-on office lights in city centers. And that can be difficult to do.
4. Gather your equipment
Yes you can photograph the northern lights using a smartphone. They are ideal for ensuring that what you can see is indeed an aurora and not a cloud. The fabulous reds and greens you see in the May 10 images look much more vibrant to a camera than to the human eye, which sees mostly gray.
A handheld smartphone will do the job in a pinch, and it’s useful for checking that Aurora is present. But for a good, memorable photo, you still ideally need a tripod. This applies to both a smartphone and a manual mirrorless or DSLR camera.
For the latter, use a wide-angle lens with the widest aperture possible (for example a 14mm lens and an aperture of around f/2.8). A spare battery or two and a small headlamp will also be useful.
5. Prepare the best settings
The best settings for aurora will depend not only on sky conditions, but also on the time of night they appear and how bright they are. However, you are looking at a long exposure of at least a few seconds and possibly up to 20 seconds. Hence the tripod.
Set the lens to infinity focus, shoot in raw mode, and use a white balance of around 3500K to 4000K. The reference settings to start your experiments with would be ISO 800, a shutter speed between 5 and 20 seconds (for a very dark aurora), at an aperture of f/2.8. Shoot in raw and post-processing mode to bring out the color, but be careful not to make the greens and reds too vibrant.
For smartphones, “night mode” is the best choice. If you can control the exposure, experiment with a few to 10 seconds. It is worth considering using one of the best camera apps like Halide or a mode dedicated to astrophotography, like that of Google Pixel phones.