This is my collection of northern lights photos, shot over twenty-some years across Alaska. Most of the northern lights photos in here came out of the Brooks Range and Gates of the Arctic, the Mentasta Mountains in Wrangell-St. Elias, Denali Park and the Alaska Range, and the arctic coast along the Beaufort Sea. The gallery covers fall, winter, and spring aurora, from quiet green arcs on the horizon to overhead coronas moving fast enough you can't keep up.
Shooting northern lights photos in Alaska is a cold, slow business. You wait for clear skies, a dark moon, low light pollution, and a solar forecast that says something might happen. Plenty of nights, nothing does. Other nights the whole sky lights up at 2am and stays that way for an hour. Most of the photos in here came out of nights that started with a lot of standing around in -20 weather and a tripod that didn't want to extend.
There's also a separate set of Alaska aurora borealis photos drawn from Wrangell-St. Elias, Katmai, Denali, and arctic and subarctic Alaska across spring, winter, and fall.
The northern lights happen when charged particles from the solar wind hit earth's upper atmosphere. The solar wind moves at close to a million miles per hour and can reach us in under 40 hours. Once it arrives, the particles funnel along earth's magnetic field lines toward the poles, which is why northern lights are a high-latitude show. The colors come from which gas is getting hit and at what altitude. Oxygen produces the green and the rare deep red. Nitrogen produces the blues and purples.
Other photo pages of note
