Yellowknife, the small capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories, is one of the best places on Earth to see the northern lights. A photographer who posts as just.sitting.around travelled there on an aurora-hunting trip and, after nights of waiting in the cold and dark, finally saw a full aurora storm for the first time: the whole sky covered in green and reddish light above a cabin and a line of dark spruce.
A first aurora storm, in the photographer’s words
The series was shared on Bored Panda in 2015. The photographer describes the long wait, then the moment the sky opened up. Standing under the light, they found themselves thinking of their grandmother, who had died years earlier, and that memory became part of what the night meant.
The figure in several frames is the photographer. They set the camera on a tripod and took a few shots from in front, then stopped photographing and simply stood and watched. Each picture carries its own title:
- Light the light
- Take a rest
- Engulfed under the light
- Flying oyster
- Stars with aurora
- Home sweet home after all the long nights
Why Yellowknife is so good for the northern lights
Yellowknife sits on the north shore of Great Slave Lake, about 400 km south of the Arctic Circle, with around 20,000 residents. Its secret is position. The Northwest Territories lie directly beneath the auroral oval, the ring around the magnetic pole where auroras are most frequent and intense. The territory’s tourism board counts displays on up to 240 nights a year.
The climate helps too. Winter air here is dry and the skies are often clear, so the lights are not hidden by cloud as often as on wetter coasts. The trade-off is cold: the average January temperature is about −26 °C.
What makes the aurora green, red and pink
Auroras happen when charged particles from the Sun hit gases in the upper atmosphere and make them glow. The Canadian Space Agency explains how each colour forms:
- Green, the most common colour, comes from oxygen at about 100 to 300 km up.
- Red comes from oxygen atoms higher still, around 300 to 400 km.
- Pink and dark red fringes along the lower edge come from nitrogen, at about 100 km.
- Blue and purple come from hydrogen and helium and are hard for the eye to pick out against the night sky.
Cameras pick up colour better than the eye in the dark, so long exposures like these often look more saturated than the view in person, especially for the reds and purples.
Planning an aurora trip to Yellowknife
- Seasons: autumn viewing runs from mid-August to the end of September, when the lakes are still open and reflect the lights. Winter viewing runs from mid-November to early April, over frozen lakes and snow.
- Getting there: Yellowknife Airport is the busiest in northern Canada, with flights from southern Canadian cities.
- Where to watch: outfitters run evening trips out of town and three- and four-night packages, and some lodges let you watch from the property.
- Timing: plan several nights, check the aurora forecast each day, and pick dark, clear nights.
- Photography: bring a tripod, as here, and a foreground such as a cabin, a treeline or a person to give the sky scale.
Dress for real cold in winter: insulated boots, layered clothing and spare camera batteries kept warm in an inside pocket.
For aurora footage in motion, see what an aurora “superstorm” video can tell us, or head to Norway for Harald Albrigtsen’s whales beneath the northern lights.
Related reading
- Travelling as a Couple: Shared Plans, Different Interests and Better Days
- An Aurora Film from 2015: Colour, Motion and the Superstorm Claim
- The Mountain: Seven Days of Sky Photography at Teide
- Sun Halos over Finland: Understanding Pauli Hänninen’s Photographs
- Mike Taylor’s Maine Aurora Photography and a Change of Direction
- Ten Northern-Lights Regions: Geography, Darkness and Realistic Expectations
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