Background

There is no place in the U.S. better than Alaska for the purpose of watching the Northern Lights. The area around Fairbanks is at the perfect latitude and if you visit in the right season you can see the lights in 4 out of 5 nights.

Fairbanks is in the Interior part of Alaska. It is far from the other attractions, like the salmon-catching bears or the glaciers that dip into the ocean. You visit Fairbanks either to watch the Aurora, or to participate in some activity like dog sledding or snowmobiling.

What We Did

The exciting thing about watching the Aurora is that it can happen at any time, but since you are in the right place for watching it you don't really have to stay in the cold all night to catch a glimpse. We would walk out after dinner, and there it was! We would peek through our window before going to bed, and suddenly it was time to put something on, grab the camera, and rush outside.

Speaking of cameras, ours can do 10-30 sec exposures at f/2.8. It is Canon Rebel with a wide-angle lens (a 28mm f/2.8 fixed focal length lens is about $160 at Adorama, and is of a very good optical quality). You need the wide-angle lens in order to capture a bigger portion of the sky, and to minimize star trails. The long exposures mean you will need a tripod and possibly, but not necessarily, a remote control (the simple wire with a switch which retails at $20). We found that using our camera's built-in exposures of 10, 15, 20, and 30 seconds worked just fine. We tried different exposure times and took lots of pictures. Some of them were good.

Chena Hot Springs Resort is a very decent place for Aurora viewing. You can watch the Lights while soaking in the hot springs (free for guests). We stayed in the new Moose Lodge, because it is extra clean. In our opinion it is definitely worth the extra $50 per night. The meals are quite good, and not overpriced considering that the place is remote and everything has to be delivered from Fairbanks.

The right time to watch the Aurora is at the beginning or at the end of winter, when the sky is still dark enough, but the nights are not terribly cold. We chose to visit in March so that we could go see ice sculptures at Fairbanks, made by people from around the world. The sculptures covered diverse themes and ranged in size from small, single-block pieces to multi-block compositions. It was new moon when we were there---this made the sky dark at night and maximized the opportunities for Aurora viewing.

How We Got There

Alaska Airlines has direct flights between Seattle in Fairbanks. We arrived late in Fairbanks so we stayed at Comfort Inn---it is clean, inexpensive, and walking distance from the Ice Art Festival. A Chena Hot Springs shuttle picked us up from Fairbanks by arrangement, for a modest roundtrip fee.