This year has been one of the best to catch sight of the beautiful northern lights.
One of nature’s more ethereal, yet elusive, sights, the dancing greens and reds of the aurora have made an excellent showing throughout 2025.
The reason behind these fabulous displays all begins 150 million km (93 million miles) away, on the surface of the Sun.
Auroras occur when charged particles from the Sun – the solar wind – strike our planet’s atmosphere.
Earth’s magnetic field guides these particles towards our atmosphere, where they strike against the nitrogen and oxygen in the air. This causes them to glow, creating the beautiful light show we know as the aurora.
How spectacular these light shows are all depends on how active the Sun is.
Our star follows a roughly 11-year cycle of rising and falling activity, known as the solar cycle.
At its peak, the Sun not only has its normal solar wind, but also frequently hurls out clouds of plasma, known as a coronal mass ejection.
The peak of our current solar cycle was in October 2024, but our Sun will continue to be active for the next year or so.
Around the cycle’s peak, storms also tend to be more intense, which can change where the aurora appears.
Normally, the lights are confined to the auroral oval – a ring around both poles at a latitude of around 65 to 70º.
A more energetic storm, however, drives the lights closer to the equator. This year, several strong storms drove the aurora down to the southern parts of the UK and much of the US.
The southern lights – the aurora australis – normally occur over unpopulated areas and empty ocean, but this year there were several occasions where glorious displays could be seen from Australia and New Zealand.
All of this means that 2025 has been a great year to not only see the aurora but to capture them on camera.
The Capture the Atlas blog has curated 25 of the best images for their annual Northern Lights Photographer of the Year competition. Check them out below.
Lights & Ice – Tori Harp
Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park, New Zealand - Photo credit: Tori Harp
Arctic Rain – Vincent Beudez
Essence of the Arctic Night – Giulio Cobianchi
Frozen Silence Beneath the Lights – Nikki Born
Sueños en Eystrahorn – Pablo Ruiz
Twisting Turn – Virgil Reglioni
Aurora Comet Lemmon – Pete Horálek
Corona Blast Aurora Geomagnetic Storm – Roi Levi
Speechless – Rolf Rohner
The Northern Crown – Mari Jääskeläinen
Read more:
- What’s the furthest south the Northern Lights have been seen?
- What causes the Northern Lights?
- Auroras could soon pose serious threat to our electrical infrastructure, study reveals
Colours of the aurora
One aspect of the aurora that photography excels at capturing is its huge variety of colours.
These colours originate from the particles in our atmosphere, which the solar wind is ‘exciting’, causing them to glow.
The most predominant colour is the beautiful green hue that’s most often associated with the aurora. This comes from oxygen atoms at lower altitudes, up to around 240km (150 miles).
If the oxygen is at a higher altitude, it reacts slightly differently and instead glows red, the second most common colour.
The rarest hues to spot are intense purples and blues. These come from nitrogen molecules, but are only ever seen during the most intense displays.
Neon Nightfall – Andres Papp
Gibson Steps Aurora – Jeff Cullen
Nightscape – Sadeq Hayati
Guardians of the Aurora – Daniel Mickleson
One Autumn Night – Jesús Garrido
Celestial Fireworks on New Years – Sara Aurorae
Llangrannog Aurora – Mathew Browne
Aurora Bouquet Above Godafoss – Martin Giraud
Auroral Cinnamon Roll – Marc Rassel
Fiordland Aurora and Lupins – Douglas Thorne
Is the aurora dangerous?
The aurora itself is just a beautiful light show you should feel free to enjoy without any worry.
However, the solar activity creating the aurora can be dangerous – at least if you’re up in space.
The radiation is a serious health risk for any astronauts in orbit. Whenever an intense solar flare is due to wash over the International Space Station, the crew are forced to take shelter in the most heavily shielded part of the station.
The radiation is particularly dangerous to satellites too, as it can damage their hardware, potentially knocking them out completely.
Solar activity can also cause the upper layers of the atmosphere to expand, increasing drag on any low-altitude satellites.
In February 2022, that’s exactly what happened to 40 satellites that had recently been launched as part of SpaceX’s Starlink communications network. As such, they didn’t have the fuel to reach their intended orbit and all crashed back down to Earth.
We don’t need to worry about this radiation here on Earth, thankfully, as our atmosphere and magnetic field protect us.
One thing we do need to look out for is when these storms crash into our magnetic field, as this can disrupt radio communications and even induce surges in power lines on the ground.
Alone Beneath the Dancing Sky – Nikola Vukotić
Auroral Reflections – Travis D Amick
A Cathedral of Green Light Rising Over Skógafoss – Victor Lima
Veni, Vidi, Vici – Marina Prol
Northern Lights Over North Greenland – Ollie Taylor
Read more:
