Aurora season 2025–2026 in numbers
- 12 minutes ago
- 3 min read
I collect data and record statistics about every aurora watch I perform, even if it's from the balcony of my house. This season I decided not to try to go out every time the northern lights chances were rising. So more of my footage is taken from my home.
Still, I left my house by car 20 times. However, in this presentation even auroras shot from my balcony count as aurora hunts. Ok, lets look at the numbers.
My 34 aurora hunts include the 13 times I only went out on my balcony or back yard. Only one of my aurora excursions was totally unsuccessful. I simply did not see any auroral activity due to activity dying before I reached my destination. That also happened to be the coldest night I went out, with temperatures below -20° Celsius. Still, that night was spectacular because of snow in the trees and beautiful moonlight on that.
11 auroras were really good and 8 disappointing. All the other something in between.
The season started like it use to, in mid August, and ended in late April. I spent a couple of hours outside in average. The longest one was just over 5 hours and the shortest less than 20 minutes.
I captured the aurora in 17 different locations this season. I have a list of quite many new locations to try, but many of them requires more time and planning. My longest drive was 91 kilometers and this was due to two terrible mistakes, when I had no memory card in my camera and then went out the second time with two empty batteries. This actually ended in being the best aurora night of the season which made me forget my mistakes and forgive myself.
Although Finland is considered to be a cold country the average temperature during my aurora excursions is not extremely low. January was cold this year but the auroral activity happened to be low then, too. Seeing the aurora when it's +15° is quite nice.
Some may be surprised by how few photos I take during a night. It's mainly because exposure times are long (up to several seconds). But another factor is that I try to take all sorts of photos: pictures of me in it, pictures with my storm lamp, pictures with the landscape, and always a variety of foregrounds. This takes time and the result is better photos, but fewer. The number of really great photos is still down at 1%. These great photos are collected from 6 or 7 separate occasions. I don't come back with photos I consider to be fantastic more often than that.
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Summary: The season was not the best one, but I captures some awesome pictures and discovered some new places. So I'm satisfied.
In my next blog post I will show photos from the season and talk about some special experiences. Here is a video from my back yard. Pretty awesome even in a light polluted town.
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