Northern Lights Photoshoot

The life of a Northern Lights photographer involves happily lost sleep. Last night my wife and I had decided to try our hand at taking pictures of star trails as they circle around the North Star. At 12:15 am we walked down to our cabin's dock to start the 30 minute exposures we had planned out at twilight when we set up our tripods with the proper angles. Our goal was to not only obtain star trails, but also get their reflection in our lake just south of the Canadian border in northern Minnesota. Our lake is named appropriately enough, Northstar Lake.

However the heavens had different ideas for last night's photoshoot. A display of Northern Lights was starting to wave across the sky, and reflect in the lake. Given it was a gorgeous night with temperatures in the mid 60's ... a rare event in the Northland ... we stayed up till 2:45 am enjoying and photographing the light show. We felt the experience was better than the fireworks from the prior evening's July 4th displays.

Molly and I both own high end Canon powershot cameras. Normally it would not be possible to take the kind of photos we took last night, but with help from CHDK we had hacked our cameras such that it is possible to take longer exposures with overridden ISO settings than originally intended for my camera, a Canon SX40 (see my post on dual boot software systems for your camera). Our settings last night were 60 second exposures with a 2.7 aperture and ISO 400 (focus set to infinity).

While we are still learning the optimal camera settings for photographing the Aurora Borealis, my advanced research made for good results. This is only our second photoshoot of the Aurora Borealis. Our two primary web sites used for research included:

Dick Hutchinson - link
Patrick Andres - link

In addition, the Northland's AstroBob keeps me informed on when to head outside to enjoy the heavens while at the same time teaching me about what I am viewing.

Here are five photos from last night's photoshoot (July 5/6). It was a magical night on Northstar Lake! Click upon any image to view at full size and resolution.

Molly during last night's photoshoot