“This year, as we reach the solar maximum of the current solar cycle, the Northern and Southern Lights have been more active than ever, illuminating skies in unexpected places where they’ve rarely—if ever—been photographed,” say the organizers of the 2024 Northern Lights Photographer of the Year contest.
Bringing together the work of dozens of photographers around the world, the unique competition highlights the endless variety of landscapes, atmospheric conditions, and astronomical phenomena that combine into otherworldly visions of the sky.
When solar wind causes disturbances in the earth’s magnetosphere, we are sometimes treated to luminous, rippling skies. The phenomenon is often referred to as the northern lights, or aurora borealis, and in the southern hemisphere, it’s aurora australis. Coined by 17th-century astronomer Galileo, the names draw on ancient Greco-Roman deities who watched over the dawn (Aurora) and the northerly and southerly winds (Borealis and Australis, respectively).
Presented by Capture the Atlas, which combines destination photo tours with guidance and tutorials for photographers of all skill levels, the competition’s top 25 images—a selection of our favorites included here—span locales from Spain to Namibia to Arizona.
Uroš Fink’s stunning capture from Istria, Croatia, foregrounds a brilliant aurora with a Perseid meteor shower. He described the moment like being “treated to a ‘multi-course menu’ of the night sky,” in which he captured not only the greenish glow but also the Milky Way, the constellation Orion, Zodiacal light, and the distant glow of Jupiter and Mars.
Other winners include Tom Rae’s glowing view of the Milky Way bathed in pink light, taken from Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park, New Zealand, and Josh Beames’s dramatic drone shot of an erupting volcano in Iceland set against a luminous green curtain.
Explore all of the finalists in Capture the Atlas’s online gallery, and keep an eye out for updates about travel opportunities and the next contest on Instagram.
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