Two trips, 8 nights of chasing the northern lights, and 7 nights of successfully finding them! Not a bad percentage!

The consistency of the northern lights in the Brooks Range is truly remarkable. The northern lights form in what’s known as the Van Allen Radiation Belt, which rings the northern hemisphere like a halo, conveniently, right atop the Brooks Range. (There is another Van Allen Belt in the southern hemisphere). What that means for aurora photographers on my trips to Wiseman, is that most nights, the aurora appears directly overhead.

Frequently, I get trip participants who have been paying attention to the predicted Kp numbers (this is a scale of potential aurora activity) for the trip. When they’ve seen low (1-3) numbers on the forecast, these folks often enter with low expectations.

I’m always happy to give them a pleasant surprise.

Even low-grade displays can be boomers in the Brooks Range. When the lights are overhead, the forms are most visible, starbursts, coronas, tightly waving curtains, can all be present that far north, when nothing is visible further south. In fact, big displays, when the Kp is in the 6-8 range can often be disappointing north of the Arctic Circle as the lights are pushed further south.

The summary: on Arctic Aurora Workshops, if the skies are clear, we are likely to have northern lights. In fact, it’s exceedingly rare not to.

And that’s how it played out this year. On the first trip, the signature of the lights was the intense color that popped onto our camera’s LCD screens in a way that took us all by surprise. The second trip was dominated by early-appearing lights that emerged nightly during the blue hour and lingered for as long as we had the energy to shoot. We mixed up locations nightly, with sweeping views, spruce and birch trees, Wiseman cabins, and each other as our foregrounds.

Thanks to the pandemic it had been two years since I’d last chased the aurora in the arctic. I’m thrilled the lights welcomed us back with such enthusiasm.

Dates are set for 2023! These are popular trips and tend to fill up quickly. If you’d like to sign up here is where to do it:

2023 Arctic Aurora Workshops