8 Tips to Help You Find The Northern Lights in Alaska!

Seeing the Aurora is on so many traveler's bucket lists. But, catching a glimpse of this phenomenon is pretty rare. Waiting for the perfect combination of solar activity, the right time of year, clear skies and no light pollution all add up to a good chance at finding the northern lights!

First of all, what actually are The Northern Lights? The northern lights or Aurora Borealis is a phenomenon caused by solar storms on the sun (clouds and dust etc.)

1. Plan for the right time of the year
   The lights are only visible during the late fall-early spring. Typically November-April. Which is why this comes up as our number one tip for seeing the Aurora. 

2. Trip duration
   It’s worth mentioning the obvious that the longer your trip is, the better chance you have at seeing the lights.  If you are in the area for a minimum of 3 nights you would have a 90% chance of seeing them. Staying longer increases your odds even more, provided the weather cooperates! With this in mind, we stayed for 8 days just to be sure our efforts were worth it and with the hope of seeing them more than once. If your main goal is to see the northern lights your trip duration should be anywhere from 7-12 days. 

3. Remember to keep warm! The temperature can drop SIGNIFICANTLY when the sun goes down and it may even sound silly to have to mention it on this list. BUT, if you don't prepare correctly your chances of seeing the lights will drop! We didn't prepare as well as we thought we did, even with tons of layers we found ourselves wishing we brought blankets and more hand warmers. Bring a heated blanket, extra camera batteries, hand and toe warmers, and dress in many layers. Check our blog post How to spend a week in Alaska in the winter for our full packing list!

4. Your chances increase with altitude
   As it is similar to stargazing, your chances increase the higher you can get above cloud cover. There are LOTS of higher altitude hotspots that the lights frequently pop out with a safe place to park your car and a good viewpoint getting above the clouds in fairbanks. 

5. The Northern Lights are most active from 12am to 4am!
   But with that being said you can see them before midnight and in the wee hours of the morning too. 

6. Location is everything!
   Your best shot at seeing the lights are at the north pole and the south pole. They are especially more active near the south pole. Go somewhere dark (light pollution in the city) . Fairbanks is located near the arctic circle, but it is still many hours away from the arctic circle and the more north you go, the better your chances are. In fairbanks there still is light pollution and the city lights make it impossible to see them 

7. Check these forecasts: Moon Phases, Aurora, and Weather
   For obvious reasons the weather plays a HUGE part in whether or not the lights will be visible. As soon as we arrived in Fairbanks we went to the Morris Thompson Cultural & Visitor Center in town, who told us the weekly forecast and when our best odds of seeing the northern lights were. If you are aurora hunting in the fairbanks area we highly suggest a quick stop here and speaking with a park ranger for a few minutes before heading out on your own for accurate road conditions as well. We also made sure we checked the moon phases. The aurora will appear much brighter with a new moon phase (when the moon is completely dark) as with light pollution the light from the moon makes it more difficult to see the lights. 

8. Something odd that shocked me the first time I ever saw the northern lights (in Iceland) was that they aren’t something really bright that you can see from far away on a typical night. On extraordinary nights, yes this is possible. Out the window it was a clear night and I saw some odd cloud formations in the distance that stretched across the sky. I wondered if it could be the lights and took a long exposure photo on my camera. I was shocked when my display screen was a bright glowing green. Eventually the clouds came closer and closer and were eventually above us and hovered for a while before turning purple, green and twirling around us. We were driving along and stopped on the side of the road in the middle of absolutely nowhere with no one and nothing around us, truly a moment I will remember forever. I think this is REALLY important to mention, we recommend waiting where you are and staying put (in your warm car) for at least 2 hours because you just never know when they’ll pop out and show up! If you see something off in the distance it may be them but wait them out! Longer if you can deal with just sitting in your car or in the cold. Driving around chasing them at different destinations isn’t really worth it unless you find cloud coverage or bad weather at the location you're in. But the lights are constantly moving so you could be driving away from the destination you’ve been at for 2 hours to try another one and 5 minutes later the lights pop out where you just were!  

Extra Tips for Photographers!

Gear that you will need:

• DSLR or Mirrorless camera (high ISO capabilities)
  I personally shoot with a Sony A7rii and have had great results

• Low Aperture Wide Angle lens

• Tripod

• Extra fully charged batteries

Shooting Settings

ISO: This will depend on things like how dark the area is around you due to the moon phase, light pollution, and whether or n

Aperture: As low as it will go. 3.5 is optimal.

Shutter Speed: This depends on how you want your photo to look. If the lights are very active and moving quickly I recommend even as low as 6 seconds to capture them up and up to 22 seconds for slower moving auroras.

File Format: Always shoot your photos in RAW, this will help in post while you are editing your pictures later.

Editing: I always use Lightroom to edit my aurora photos. And use our presets to edit the photo afterwards in Lightroom! 

Bonus: Iphone Photos and Northern lights

With a tripod, it is possible! iPhones nowadays have really become something that can just about take over some lower end DSLR and Mirrorless cameras. Heres a few shots I captured with my iPhone. These are completely unedited taken in RAW format for 10 second exposure on night mode.

Photographing the Northern Lights is HARD. Even for professional photographers like us with years of experience. We both had appropriate gear in order to photograph them and I think because of our lack of practice (not living close enough to photograph them often) made it a bit challenging for us. Especially because they could be there for a moment or 10 minutes, you never know. The formations of the lights are constantly changing so jumping into the photo, staying still while you’re shivering cold, and getting the exposure time correct for the speed of the lights above you and formatting a foreground, is exceptionally harder than we expected. 

I truly think this is something that needs to be practiced and would not recommend going out and buying a camera for this experience just to photograph them. If you want photos, I'd spend the money on a tour that offers them. BUT I won’t ever tell you *not* to buy a camera, just to weigh your options, confidence level and experience with a camera (auto mode won’t really work here). If you're interested in buying a camera we suggest our Sony A7rii or Canon R5 from our GEAR page.

The weather changes constantly and we went out the first night in Alaska to see them at 2am and got the best show of our whole trip that night. The rest of the week we only saw them here and there and nothing like night one due to cloud coverage, snow and sleeping right through our alarms.