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Vincent Ledvina remembers the first time he saw the aurora borealis, while out trick or treating as a four-year-old in his Minnesota home town.
“It's just so beautiful. You just are kind of taken aback,” Ledvina said in an interview with weather.com. “When you're out there, especially if you're somewhere where you have a lot of open space, just seeing the aurora kind of raining down over you. It's just so large, it's just so all encompassing.”
In high school, Ledvina took up photography. For college, he moved to North Dakota to be closer to the aurora, also known as the northern lights.
“I started teaching people about photography and also aurora chasing,” Ledvina said. “And then everything kept building and building and building and I decided I'm going to move to Alaska. I'm going to take this seriously. So that’s where I’m at now.”
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Ledvina lives in Fairbanks, where he is pursuing a doctorate degree in space physics. His specific area of study is auroral beads, a type of light formation that looks like a string of pearls. Scientists think they may hold clues to space weather, in particular geomagnetic substorms that can disrupt radio and satellite transmissions.
Ledvina closely follows the aurora forecast updated every 30 minutes by NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, as well as keeping in tune with local weather conditions.
Some nights, he does academic work on a laptop in his car while he chases auroras.
“I try not to miss anything,” Ledvina said. “Because even with the data that we have access to, you can make predictions about what the aurora is going to do, but the aurora will always surprise you.”
Ledvina picked the right time to dig deep into his passion. The sun is in a period of solar maximum right now, which is a time of increased sunspots and solar flares. The energy from solar flares and solar winds is pulled toward Earth's poles where it interacts with the atmosphere to create the aurora borealis.
To have the best chance of spotting a light show, Ledvina recommends putting yourself as far north into the auroral oval as possible. That’s an area over the North Pole where the northern lights are most active. The auroral oval includes parts of Alaska, northern Canada, Greenland, Iceland and northern Europe.
He recommends giving yourself at least a week to have the best chance of getting clear skies, good weather and bright auroras.
Ledvina’s biggest travel tip? “A lot of people think that they can go in the summer, which that's not going to work because it's consistently daylight in the Arctic in the summer. So, go in the winter.”
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There are also southern lights, or aurora australis. But most of the region where those occur, including over Antarctica, is difficult to reach and not easily accessed by the casual traveler.
Ledvina uses a variety of equipment to capture his amazing images, but said some of his favorites were shot on his cell phone camera.
Ledvina goes by “The Aurora Guy” online, where he shares tips and tricks for viewing and photographing the aurora, both for travelers and those lucky enough to be able to see the northern lights from their own backyard. He is active on social media and recently updated a free ebook available on his website.
“I mean, it is beautiful, right? That's sort of the underlying theme behind all this, is that the auroras are life changing if you see a really good one," Ledvina said. "And I just want other people to have that experience."
Weather.com reporter Jan Childs covers breaking news and features related to weather, space, climate change, the environment and everything in between.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
