Nights the Sky Went Green

Every aurora photograph is a small act of patience. Someone stood in minus twenty, watching a faint grey smudge, trusting the camera to see the green their eyes could not. Then the sky moved — it genuinely moves, like curtains in a draught — and the long exposure caught what the cold was hiding.

We picked these frames for their restraint. The best aurora shots are not the loudest ones; they keep a dark foreground, a still lake, a line of spruce, so the light has something to hang above.

On a phone, set one of these and turn your brightness down. The green reads better in a dim room, the way it does in the actual Arctic.