The Great Chase - Photographing the Aurora Borealis

The aurora borealis rippling across the sky in Abisko, Sweden.

The first time I saw the northern lights, my mother and I were tripping down a dark trail in Abisko, Sweden, trying to find a clearing in the forest or higher ground, whichever came first. She was certain we had taken that same path earlier in the day, and thought it would soon come to a hill overlooking the canyon that cuts through Abisko National Park. My GPS said otherwise, but regardless, we’d eventually hit the lake shore, where we’d have an unobstructed view of the northern sky.

“I think that’s it,” she said, stopping me, pointing above us.

I looked up, expecting to see the neon green ribbons that I knew from photos. Instead, all I saw was a grey, lightly luminescent splotch, hovering in the sky.

“Are you sure? I think that’s a cloud.”

And just as suddenly as the pale, milky, almost moon-colored swish had appeared, it splashed out into a wide, swooping swirl, like someone had dashed paint across a canvas. In the distance, I heard a whoop from my husband, who was trailing us with his mother. The swirl tentatively spread across the small patch of clear sky above us, ending in a delicate hook. There, in faint shades of pinks, purples, and greys, it shimmered and pulsed, a wall of light vibrating in the sky.

I had read enough about the northern lights to be prepared for static, slow-moving arcs, but this weaved through the night, changing and folding into itself. “It’s so pretty,” I kept whispering, conscious of my camera laying untouched in my bag. I was afraid to tear my eyes off the spectacle. Twenty minutes later, the snow clouds that had been threatening the valley all day finally drifted in, where they would linger for the duration of our three-night trip.

Given the bad timing of the impending snowstorm, we were extraordinarily lucky to have caught a glimpse of the lights at all. There was just enough of a clear window of sky to let us see them— and aurora activity that was strong enough to push the lights directly above us. But it left me wanting more. I wanted to see them again on a clear night, to bask in their lingering presence, and to finally capture them on camera.

And so, for the next couple years, I obsessively tracked solar storm patterns, jotting down every time there was a solar flare and setting calendar alerts for the 26-day cycle that the sun made a full rotation. I cross-referenced sun activity and predictions with live webcams, hoping I could game statistics and brute-force my way into seeing them again.

Mostly, it’s chance. Up north, high above the Arctic Circle, it turns out it’s less about “Will there be northern lights?” (the answer is almost always “Yes,” though activity may vary), and more about, “Can I actually see the northern lights?” And that all comes down to weather. If you have a sky full of low-laying clouds, it doesn’t matter what the Kp index is, you’re not going to see the northern lights. If you have patchy skies, then you might see them, depending on where your clear skies are, and how active the aurora is. But your only solid bet is clear skies, and since only the winter months give you enough nightfall to see the delicate lights at that latitude, chasing good weather becomes the biggest challenge in the whole journey.

My favorite not-so-secret spot in Abisko— a public boat dock on the shores of Lake Torntrask that has ample parking and plenty of dark skies.

Abisko, Sweden

To see the northern lights, three conditions need to be met: dark nights, latitude, and clear skies.

Luckily, the first one is pretty easy. For the average aurora, you simply need skies that are dark enough for the lights to be visible, which means driving away from large clusters of city lights. It’s a common misconception that the northern lights only occur in the winter. Technically, they’re there all year round. The difference is, up near the Arctic Circle, the summer nights simply don’t get dark enough to see them. In the winter, though, dark nights are plentiful, and because the aurora is a constant, swirling presence, you’ll often be graced with their beauty for hours on end. As a good resource for timing, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) runs a great semi-real time forecast that shows where the aurora oval is currently positioned, as well as whether the activity is strong enough to be visible at more southern latitudes.

The second one is fairly easy to plan around, as well. Basically, head north, as close to the Arctic Circle as you can get. Yes, there are times when geomagnetic storms will expand the aurora oval and allow it to be visible much further south, but that can be much less predictable, especially if you also have to factor in weather. If you’re already in the northern latitudes, your variables are reduced to just one big thing— clear skies.

One of the reasons we chose to visit Abisko, Sweden during our first trip— and again three years later, is because statistically, it has the highest number of cloud-free skies in Northern Europe. Home to beautiful Abisko National Park, with its arctic meadows and river-cut chasms, its location near the Scandinavian mountain range places it in a rain shadow, granting it a unique micro-climate that often gifts clear skies, even when the rest of Lapland is socked in with clouds. It helps that it also lies directly under the aurora oval, so if the skies are clear, then visitors have a very high chance of seeing the northern lights. As an added bonus, it’s a fairly small town, popular mostly with backpackers and hikers, so getting out of the city lights is as easy as wandering a few blocks down to the lake shore. Because of all these factors, Abisko is easily one of the best spots in Europe to try to glimpse the northern lights. To maximize your chances, plan on spending as many nights there as you can.

Our Journey Towards the Northern Lights

Despite all my best laid plans, our search for the aurora still relied on a heavy mix of good ol’ fashioned luck. I knew I wanted to spend a week in Abisko again, but decided to mix things up on the way there. We ended up road-tripping through neighboring Finland, a jaw-droppingly beautiful country, filled with pristine lakes, towering birches, kind people, and a permeating sense of social trust that makes it one of the most incredible countries I’ve ever had the privilege to visit. Our journey took us from its capitol, Helsinki, up north through the canals of Porvoo, to the medieval castles of Savonlinna, to beautiful Finnish Lapland, with its bossy herds of reindeer and abundance of husky farms. It also gave us the ability to easily cross-over to Sweden, which during COVID was open unconditionally to all its Nordic neighbors.

We were blessed with unseasonably good weather for the first few days of our road trip, but it abruptly ended when we, quite literally, drove into a thicket of dense fog that lifted only high enough to hover above the tree tops in an unbroken layer of drab melancholy. Worriedly, I checked the forecast for the next ten days. All of our stops, including Abisko, were expecting clouds for the next two weeks. “Defeated by weather again,” I thought glumly. I was morose, and no amount of beautiful scenery and fresh cloudberries could shake my malaise.

Northern lights low on the horizon from our tiny house in Kuusamo. To the naked eye, it was mostly a light haze, but on camera, you could clearly see the aurora.

Technically we did “see” the northern lights during the first half of the trip. One night, after we enjoyed the wood-fired sauna at a tiny house perched on the edge of a working reindeer farm in Kuusamo, Finland, we caught some lights on the horizon before the clouds stormed in. A few days later, comfortably settled into Abisko, we spied glimpses of light behind heavy ropes of rainclouds.

But it… wasn’t really satisfying. As I mentioned earlier, the northern lights are not as they appear in photographs. When you see photos of them low on the horizon, like our experience in Kuusamo, it’s only what the camera sees. Our feeble human eyes process it only as a glow— subtly green at times, but almost indistinguishable from far-away city lights unless the activity is enough to make it pulse and vibrate.

When it’s overhead, the majesty of the lights is something else. They hang as layers of vertical curtains, illuminating the sky like a soft nightlight amongst the stars. And when they dance, it’s like laughter and pure joy expressed in sprays of light.

Lady Aurora, At Last

Our third night in Abisko, I finally allowed myself to hope. Even though the weather forecast said the night would be partly cloudy, I was banking on the cloud forecast from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, which was promising a window of clear skies just in the pocket above Abisko. We drove again to our favorite spot, a boat dock near Lake Torntrask with ample car parking and fire pits, perfect for a night of huddling in the cold. Even though I knew the sun wouldn’t fully set for another hour or so, I couldn’t bear the thought of waiting another minute.

Prior to that night, I had never fully understood the aurora oval maps. I knew that it shifted in position throughout the day, but I couldn’t fully grasp it. How was it that the lights came from the north, but you could view them to the northeast and northwest?

The beginning tendrils of lights over the northeastern skies at dusk where the aurora circle emerges from above the distant mountains.

It turns out that throughout the day, depending on the position of the Earth, the oval that is the ever-shifting aurora borealis rotates around the globe from east to west. You can watch it on the aforementioned NOAA Aurora Forecast if you’re having a slow day at work, although my tracker of choice is the simply named "My Aurora Forecast & Alerts” app for iOS and Android that shows the aurora borealis and aurora australis as green bands that slink across the world. The wider the green band, the further south you can see potentially see the aurora. When you’re that far north, though, the aurora circle is literal. It starts as a glow over the eastern horizon, and as the night deepens and the circle makes it way west, so too does the arc of the northern lights, like a ribbon wrapped around the top of the world.

It really is a surreal sight. One moment you’re squinting at the horizon and checking every strand of light with your camera for the telltale green, and an hour later, you’re standing under continuous arcs of light reflected against the lake. On occasion, the activity picks up and literal waves of light ripple through the arc, crashing and disappearing into the northwest.

Shades of pinks and fuchsias join the signature green— through the camera lens, of course.

The best part is, the light show lasts for hours—weather pending. That night, we watched the aurora for three mesmerizing hours until the clouds finally lazed in. In that time, we were lucky enough to see sporadic moments of intense activity that filled the sky with a joyous mint green even our eyes could see. And then a couple hours later, when the skies cleared, we went outside again to bask in the light bright enough to be glimpsed from the kitchen window.

Lights so bright the whole sky is on fire. There on the left is Mt. Nuolja, home of the Aurora Sky Station. During the winter tourist months, visitors can book dinner packages to watch the aurora up on the peak— sometimes even above any low-lying clouds that might be obscuring the view for people on the ground.

For the remainder of our stay, we were greeted almost every night with low-lying clouds. A sprawling winter storm was spiraling its way up Northern Europe, bringing with it a promise of snowstorms. But by then, the pressure was off. I had finally photographed my northern lights, and I could enjoy Abisko for its daytime delights— hiking across lingonberry-studded meadows, chasing waterfalls, and my favorite— shopping at the Godisfabriken (Candy Factory). It’s the only store in the tiny town, but it has all the food staples you need and all the treats you want, including bins upon bins of bulk Swedish gummy candy and chocolates.

The night before we were set to head back towards Finland, Abisko gave us a farewell gift. The clouds parted for us one last time, and although the aurora was fainter, it was still visible. And just as beautiful.

Parting Advice

The aurora borealis can be seen any time of the year the skies get dark enough, which means mid-to-late August to mid-April in the higher latitudes. While strong solar storms can extend the aurora oval as far south as the northern half of the mainland U.S. and equivalent latitudes, it can most reliably be seen near the Arctic Circle, where it doesn’t require intense activity to be visible. With conditions of time and place met, the biggest challenge then becomes the weather. To increase your chances of clear skies, the only thing you can really do is plan your trip such that you can spend multiple days up north— on this last trip, we spent nine days near or above the Arctic Circle and had two clear nights. Both of those nights happened to be in Abisko, whose favorable micro-climate has led to locals affectionately calling the skies above the town the Blue Hole—a patch of sky that’s frequently clear even when the rest of Lapland is smothered in clouds. The best way to get to Abisko is to fly into Kiruna and rent a car, unless you’re road-tripping.

If you want to add more variables into the mix, you can try to plan your trip around cyclical periods of stronger solar activity, but there’s so much unpredictability that it may not be worth the energy. Instead, you can try to control for things like moon phases—I’ve seen some really cool photos of the northern lights during full moons, but the more light you have in the sky, the more light pollution you’ll have. And speaking of such, you’ll want to find a spot away from streetlights and houses, but that’s easy to do in the sparsely populated north. As for whether it’s worth signing up for a northern lights tour, in my opinion, you’re just as likely to see the lights on your own as you are with a tour. They can take you to cool photo spots, and they often have photography experts who can help you set up your camera, but once the light show starts, you might not want to interrupt your moment by packing into a van with strangers.

As for my favorite cheap travel hack, run an open-ended search on Google Flights to find the cheapest destination airport (Stockholm, Helsinki, etc.) and dates to travel. With a little patience and flexibility, you can almost always find flights to Europe from the U.S. in the upper $300s or lower $400s.

My last two bits of advice? Pack snacks, hot beverages, and blankets, because it gets really cold at night, even in your car. And bring a tripod. I shot everything on my Sony Alpha 7iii, which has incredible low-light capture, but these days, you can even get good aurora pictures on a smartphone. For those curious about my camera setup, I shot everything at ISO 1600, 24mm, f/1.4. Exposure time ranged from 1.5-10 seconds depending on aurora activity.