Photographing the Aurora

The aurora is a tricky phenomenon to photograph.? And I say this as a relative novice.? So you might more fully appreciate a mind bending shot of the aurora next time it passes through your feed, here’s a bit of background. The fundraiser for a 2 ft x 5 ft metal print of the aurora is still underway, all proceeds benefitting my health expenses with Stage IV cancer and getting the Andy Best family back on their feet after a catastrophic vehicle accident.? This image is actually a 2 photo pano, adeptly processed by Ben Canales , and has a $600 value including shipping.? But there’s way more “value” than what it costs….there’s the intrinsic value of what it took to get this shot and I wanted to give some insight.? Link to fundraiser Here: https://uncagesoul.betterworld.org/giveaways/aurora ?

1. You need dark skies, especially in the northern aspect.? That means getting 30-50 mile away from a major town.? Depending on the time of year, deep night doesn’t set in until 10-11 PM and lasts until maybe 4 AM.? You want a new moon cycle….even a quarter waning or waxing moon will dramatically brighten the sky.
2. You need clear skies.? This may mean monitoring weather and cloud cover forecast apps almost in real time so you can anticipate where you need to be when that patch of clear skies passes over.? In Alaska, there aren’t many roads that take you were you want to go, so there’s a lot of strategizing.
3. You need solar activity, specifically a CME, or Coronal Mass Ejection.? This blast of solar particles is what allows us to get some degree of an auroral forecast as it takes them around 3 days to travel to earth, and is measured as the KP index? The visual light from the CME reaches us in a matter of minutes.
4. The most reliable indicator to check in the Northern Lights?forecast is the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). When the IMF north-south direction is negative, measured in the value called “Bz”, there is a good chance of seeing the Aurora, even with a low KP index.
5. And these are all the considerations before the aurora even shows up!!? OK, so there it is!? Now what!?
6. The aurora is finicky because it’s always on the move…over there, then over there, then overhead dancing around, pulsing with intensity from dim to ‘holy shit!’So setting up a photo or a composition can be really tricky, if not downright guesswork.? This fumbing around is usually done in the darkness, in subzero temperatures, with really grumpy camera equipment.
7. Now, let’s get geeky.? Because the aurora is usually moving, and sometimes quite dramatically, dragging the shutter to let in a lot of light will blur the motion of the lights.? I prefer a crisper look.? So I have to dial up my shutter speed, which means now I need a lens and camera that can handle noise free high ISO settings, and a really wide aperture, like F1.4.? But now a single micro bobble and my image is out of focus.
8. The brightness of the aurora is always changing too…pulsing from barely seen to a rave light show.? If I just let my camera fire away, many shots will be overexposed, and many underexposed, so I’m constantly having to monitor my exposure and “protect the highlights”.
9. Without hand warmers, your fingers and your camera have about 10 minutes of life to them before everything starts to malfunction.
10. And then, maybe you travel all that way, make all the preparations, put yourself deep in the frozen Alaska wilds, and the Northern Lights never show up at all.? That’s the chase, and how the game is played.? ?