What Are The Northern Lights And Where Can You See Them?
The Northern Lights (also known as the Aurora borealis) are one of the top things everyone wants to be able to see at least once in a lifetime. They are dancing colored lights that appear in the skies when gaseous particles in the Earths atmosphere collide with charged particles from the sun. There is lots of more detailed information about the Northern Lights online. They can be seen any time of year but are most often seen when the days are shorter and the temperatures are colder.
As you might imagine, the Northern Lights are often seen in the Northern latitudes. They can sometimes be seen as far south as Pennsylvania but are most often seen from the Canadian border north. Occasionally visitors to Yellowstone may see the Northern lights. They appear a bit more frequently up at Glacier National Park in Montana and even more often up in Banff and Jasper in the Canadian Rockies.
There is never any guarantee of seeing the Northern Lights when going to Jasper but generally speaking the farther north you go, the more likely you are to see them. The Space Weather Prediction Center is a good website to check to see if there is a chance of seeing the Northern Lights in your area. There are several apps you can download that provide similar information.
What Is It Like To Travel To Jasper To Photograph The Northern Lights?
If you want to maximize your chances of seeing the Northern Lights at Jasper National Park you’ll probably want to avoid the summer season. That’s not to say the Northern Light can’t be seen in the summer but you are more likely to see them in spring, fall and especially winter when the nights are long and the days are short.
The good thing about going to Jasper in the winter is that lodging rates tend to be a lot lower and the crowds are much smaller as well. The challenging thing about going to Jasper National Park in the winter is the old temperatures. Even in November, the low temperatures can dip as low as about 30 below zero at night with highs that might not even reach 0 degrees F. Since it will need to be dark and the Northern Light usually don’t show up until around midnight, you will need to head out when the temperatures are frigid and likely well below zero.
You’ll want to bring lots of layers and lots of warm clothes. You’ll need to be able to use your camera and still keep your fingers warm which may be a challenge.
There isn’t much public transportation around Jasper. To see the Northern Lights in a good spot away from the town and the lights of the town you’ll need to have a rental car. If you go in the winter when it is really cold you could probably take a cab somewhere. Cel phone service is generally quite good around Jasper but it may be so cold and dark so as to be dangerous to get dropped off out in the cold in the dark for an extended period of time.
What Does It Take To Get A Wall Art Quality Photo The Northern Lights At Jasper National Park?
Once you get to Jasper you’ll want to find a place to view the Northern Lights where you have a relatively open view to the north. If it is a calm night, the Northern Lights will reflect in open water if you can find a lake that is not frozen over. During the dead of winter this may be a challenge but in spring and fall you will probably be able to find a lake with a view to the north that is not frozen over. If it is really cold you will probably want to find a place where you can park and stand close to your car so you can warm up in between shots. Alternatively you might be able to sit in your car and shoot if you have a wireless shutter release you can setup.
Sometimes the Northern Lights are REALLY bright and literally dance in the skies overhead. Other times they tend to be somewhat faint. To the naked eye they may not look like much. When you take photos of the Northern Lights you will likely leave the shutter of the camera open for a long time. This will enable more light from the Norther Lights to hit the sensor and create a more vivid photo. The photo will make the Northern Lights look brighter than what you see with the naked eye.
You’ll want to have a fairly good camera (almost certainly more than a cel phone). You’ll probably want to have a bright flashlight and you’ll want a tripod for the camera.
What Is The Best Gear For Photographing The Northern Lights At Jasper National Park?
If you want to photograph the Northern Lights at Jasper National Park or anywhere else you will want to have more than just a cel phone or a point and shoot camera. For best results you’ll want to have the following equipment:
- A decent DSLR or mirrorless camera with a timer on it
- A pretty fast wide angle lens
- A cable or wireless shutter release
- A really bright flashlight with a focused beam
- A sturdy tripod, possibly with spiked feat if it will be icy
- Extra batteries. They may drain more quickly in frigid temperatures
- Plenty of memory chips
- A phone with a Northern Light app that will help you determine the ideal time to go out
- A red light flashlight
When you get to your photo spot you’ll want to find a place without much ambient light from a city, road or elsewhere. Once you are there, you want to take the following steps to setup your gear.
- Find a place with a relatively clear view to the north
- If you can find an area with calm open water in front of you, the Northern Lights will most likely reflect in the lake as they dance in the skies
- Make sure all your gear is working and your camera battery is fully charged
- Hook the camera into the tripod and make sure it is secure
- Set it to take photos with at least a two second delay
- Take out your really bright flashlight, shine it on an object in the distance and focus your camera on it
- Hook up your cable or wireless release
- Use your red light flashlight at all times if other people are around so as not to mess up their photos. If you are actively shooting use it when moving around so as not to mess up your photos.
Once everything is setup and ready to go you’ll probably want to play around with exposures to find the ideal settings to capture the best Northern Lights photos based on the conditions and the intensity of the Northern Lights in the skies.
What Is The Story Behind This Photo Print Of The Northern Lights At Jasper National Park?
During the fall and early winter of 2015 I spent a lot of time in the Canadian Rockies after wandering through the western US National Parks for much of the year. During this time of year in Jasper, things tend to slow down, the crowds fade, lodging gets cheaper and the days get colder and shorter.
At this point in the endless road trips I wasn’t doing any skiing so I had to find other things to do while in Jasper. I stayed at the old Jasper HI Hostel that was a somewhat rundown old ski lodge. It was a fairly large hostel that with HUGE dorm rooms. The main dorm room probably slept around 40 people. It was row after row of bunk beds in the basement of the building with a bathroom that had seen its better days. The showers usually worked but not always. The kitchen was functional but pretty basic and not really big enough for a busy evening dinner rush. The Internet was slow as dirt.
Since the hostel was getting old and there were only one or two shuttles that went into town from the hostel, it wasn’t the most popular place to stay. While I was there, they ran a bunch of specials. If you booked two nights you got the third free. With the USD-CAD exchange rate at the time, the stay two nights get one free brought the cost per night in US dollars down to about $15. How can you beat staying at Jasper National Park for $15 per night? The answer is you can’t. It wasn’t luxury by any means but there was a kitchen, a shower, the beds were warm and comfortable. When I travel solo, that is really all I need.
I spent a fair amount of time during the days driving down toward the small town of Hinton, AB. I did some landscape and wildlife photography down as far as Talbot Lake, explored a frozen Maligne Canyon and even went up to see Maligne Lake almost completely frozen over. I found a hotspot to photograph the Jasper bighorn rams and spent a lot of time photographing them.
Photographing the Northern Lights didn’t dawn on me until other people at the hostel started talking about going out to see the Northern Lights. We’d watch the Northern Lights tracker app and head out if it looked like the conditions would be right. It was usually sometime after midnight that the lights were forecast to light up the skies. I went with the hostel crew up to Pyramid Lake a few times but most of those nights turned out to be duds and the lights didn’t materialize as expected.
After a few trips up there that didn’t yield any good photos I started going out on my own to a few other spots. I took a few trips down toward Hinton where the landscape was wide open to the north and came up mostly empty there. On the night this photo was take I headed over to the edge of Lake Edith. It must have been about 10F below zero as my fingers and toes would start to freeze after standing outside for anything more than 15 minutes.
To get setup I got out the tripod, put the Canon 5D MK III on the tripod and hooked up the cable release. Since I didn’t have a bright flashlight I turned the high beams on the car on and used that to light up the area enough to get the camera to focus on something. Once it was set to focus I set the camera to manual focus to lock it in and shot on and off for about 2 hours. The Northern Lights would come and go. They would dance for a while and die down. I used a wide angle lens wide open and took as many shots as I could. This was the most Impressive Northern Light show I’d ever seen. It was mesmerizing! I could only imagine what it would be like in Iceland or somewhere like Yellowknife farther north in Canada.
At the point my extremities were about to freeze and fall off and it seemed like the show was over I packed up the camera and headed back to the hostel. Once there, tip toed through the bunk room to my bunk, put the camera batteries in the charger and crawled into a nice warm comfortable bed and slept a good portion of the next day.
What Formats Is This Northern Lights Print From Jasper National Park Available?
This Northern Lights print from Jasper National Park is available in sizes up to 40×60 inches and can be printed on paper, metal, canvas, acrylic and wood. If you will be hanging it in an area with diffused lighting any material with any finish will look great. If it will be hanging in an area with direct light or a lot of bright natural light you may want to get something with a matte surface. Anything with a glossy or metallic surface may reflect bright light. Anything with a matte finish will have a more subtle refined look.
If you’d like to decorate the bedroom or living room and would like something you can actively use then you might want to take a look at the Sherpa fleece blankets. The are super comfortable to curl up under and the prints on the material look great. The Sherpa fleece blankets do cost a little more than than the plush fleece but they are well worth the few extra dollars. If you get a blanket you can add matching throw pillows of this scene or another Jasper scene to complete the look.
If you need some (grocery) shopping bags to replace the plastic ones that are vanishing from most stores these days, there are really high quality canvas tote bags with this Northern Lights image available. They come in a variety of sizes, are super durable, are lined and can hold most anything you would want to put in them. The “weekender” bag is the perfect size to pack things for an overnight stay, a day at the beach of a nice full bag of groceries.
Finally, you can get this image on a jigsaw puzzle. They come in 500 and 1,000 piece sizes and make great gifts for the person who loves Jasper or the Northern Lights and loves puzzles as well. They sell quickly around the holidays and can sometimes sell out. If you are interested in one around the holidays be sure to order early!
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