Norway and the Northern Lights 2023

In a few days I will be heading off to the north of Norway for my annual trip to shoot the Northern Lights. This year I really do hope to stream the Aurora live.

aurora1_1.20.1-scaled Norway and the Northern Lights 2023
Aurora captured by my FX3 in 2022.



I’ve tried to livestream the Aurora before, but not really been successful. We go to a very remote location to get away from city lights and light pollution. But that means the cellphone connection isn’t great. And then I have had issues with getting the streaming hardware to work correctly in the extreme cold, it’s often well below -20c.
I really want to stream the output of my FX3 rather than shooting the back of the camera with a phone as I have done before. Hopefully I will actually succeed this time. There have been some major updates to the software on my Xperia Pro phone and now the HDMI input app includes rtmp streaming direct from the app, so now I can stream from the FX3 via HDMI and the Xperia Pro more easily than before.

The next big unknown is when will the Aurora be visible. To see the Aurora I need clear skies and then the Aurora has to actually be present. There is no guarantee that it will be visible and I certainly can’t predict exactly when.  So – I can’t tell you when I will be live.  Most likely it will be sometime between January 12th and January 22nd, after 16:00 GMT  and before 02:00 GMT.  I may be live many times on different nights.

Where will you be able to see the feed? I will be streaming to my YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@alisterchapman/streams

I will also be on facebook and this would be a good way to keep updated as I will try to post on facebook prior to going live on YouTube.

As well as the FX3 I’m taking an FX30 and it will be interesting to see how this performs trying to shoot the Aurora.  Main lenses for the Aurora will be the Sony 24mm f1.4 GM, 20mm f1.8 G but I will also have a Sigma 20mm f1.4 with metabones speedbooster for the FX30.

2 thoughts on “Norway and the Northern Lights 2023”

  1. Bucket list for me. But I’ll
    have to settle for a less stellar view( see what I did there?) when we visit Quebec City the 1st week of February. They say an hour north it’s often visible but as you say, the variables are aplenty! Unlike death and taxes, hope’s eternal!
    Good luck out there!

    Allen Facemire
    Atlanta, Ga-USA (Where the best comedy is our own Congress!?)

    1. Generally you want to be around 66 to 70 degrees north to view most normal Auroras. We go up to the very North of Norway to approx 70 degrees north and most of the time the Aurora will be to our North and occasionally overhead.

      It can be seen further south on occasion during solar stoms and periods of intense solar activity but I’m not sure that Quebec City at 47 degrees is far enough North even for a moderately strong display, even London is further North at 51 degrees and it is extremely rare to see it here. You would likely need to go a very long way north and it’s pretty remote territory north of Quebec city.

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