Fantastic Yellowknife Auroras

We enjoyed last year's Finland aurora experience so much we wanted to take another northern lights trip. John researched and found Yellowknife, Canada in the Northwest Territories is a prime location with visible lights over 240 nights a year. Yellowknife has crystal-clear skies, ultra-low humidity, and is in a perfect location beneath the "Auroral oval", a band of maximal Auroral activity.

Sunday March 19th we flew north almost 3,000 miles to start our adventure! We rented a small house which was perfect as we were up until 3am most nights and could enjoy the peace and quiet during the mornings. Monday we started with the grocery shopping for the week and then took a quick drive to explore and enjoy the sunny day. Yellowknife is next to the huge Great Slave lake, and there are smaller lakes everywhere. All currently frozen, and many with temporary roads connecting the one main road to cabins in the back country. We drove down one of them in anticipation of our time alone later in the week.

Monday evening we started our three evenings at the Aurora Village, a local Aboriginal-owned location providing five viewing hills located throughout their wilderness property. They also provide traditional teepees with wood stoves and hot drinks when the -10F temperatures become too much!

Each night we bundled up and walked a block to the bus pickup point at 10pm. We were driven 30 minutes out of town to the village where we stayed until 2:30am. Most nights we stayed out taking photos until 1am, and then popped into a teepee to warm up and get a hot drink. Then back out to catch some more lights. We were very lucky that each night was clear and the aurora was out in full force for most of the 3 hours we were at the village.

It was brutally cold every night. John got excited the first night and was changing cameras and lens, which meant he had his gloves off for far too long. He ended up with frostbite on five fingers, three of them pretty bad. Change of approach for the rest of the week. No camera lens changes and a trip to the local outfitting store to buy some electric heated glove liners which worked great. 

We saw incredible lights every night at the Aurora village. Very vivid and on many occasions we were mesmerized to see the curtains of lights moving across the sky - something we didn't seen in Scandinavia. To the naked eye the lights are a very light green, almost white with the occasional red hue. The camera however picks up the vivid colors, and the altitude the solar particles collide with the atmosphere determines the green, red, pink or occasionally purple colors. 

John recently won a camera modification from a virtual Night Sky Photography conference he attended and was excited to use the camera that can now see Hydrogen Alpha (H- Alpha) wavelengths. This camera now sees red colors much better and the results were spectacular.

Click here to see the photos!