Vegan in Fairbanks, Alaska
The Northern Lights

In non-scientific terms, the Northern Lights are a glimpse of the Sun’s violent power. Spitting out particles from the corona’s chaos, debris-filled solar wind travels at nearly 42 million miles per hour into the Earth’s ionosphere. The Earth’s dutiful magnetic fields grab the particles, soothe their heads with loving words, and sublimate them to fluorescent celestial majesty, photons, at the Earth’s poles–north and south–for sky watchers to revere. The Aurora Borealis.

This trip to Fairbanks, Alaska was in their honor. And in my checked bag, as I crossed to the west and then headed all the way north, a potent and pleading hope and wish and “please, dear sky.”

Though the elusive lights have disappointed many, I would spend each of the five evenings in Fairbanks searching for them if I had to. It seemed like a realistic goal. Fairbanks sits upon the aurora oval of the northern hemisphere: check! It’d be dark at night, another check. I knew how to operate all functions of my camera in the dark. (Kind of, though I know from the time I photographed the total eclipse that I do not operate well under pressure of “once in a lifetime,” regressing into near infancy.) But would it be clear? With all celestial photography, clouds can obstruct. And you cannot plan your way around a cloudy sky. Or could you?…

Not wanting to sit still at a viewing lodge, victim to overcast, or drive about the darkness haphazardly and cluelessly as how perhaps any New Yorker in Alaska for just days would be, I chose to join Aurora Chasers for the evening. They’d drive. They’d know where to go and, more importantly, when to go where–taking this most vital skill, and all the science involved, extremely serious. Our missions aligned. They want nothing more than to put me in the path of the Northern Lights and I want nothing more than to be in the path of the Northern Lights. Mutual obsession, collective will–and of course all their invaluable experience–and it happened. I’m awed, totally, by the culmination of circumstances that lead me to be under this sky at this exact moment. And to capture it…

To follow, my shots from the evening. The bright and active Aurora was in rare form. In fact, the only post-processing I did on my images was some noise reduction and illumination of the snow. Most impressively, the color is as shot.

Hashtag blessed.

So bright it nearly blew out my shot!

I switched to my fish eye lens.

It was a nice group of folks who did the tour with me.

(Left) The first shot at our first stop… misting snow and my camera not focused. (Right) The first shot at our second location. This is why you must be mobile to catch the Aurora.

Time lapse to show its movement.

Nerd alert!

We stayed under the Northern Lights for 92 minutes… then the magnetic field strength fled north, weakening the show. It was an evening I’ll never forget.