You normally have to travel further north like Alaska or Northern Canada to see the Northern Lights. I had never been able to experience or photograph them because of this. So it was a pleasant surprise when the largest geomagnetic storm in 21 years resulted in being able to view the Northern Lights from Edmonds, Washington, (near Seattle) where I live. The lights came out for several hours starting around 11:00 PM. It was worth staying up to see them!

I wasn’t prepared for the amazing mix of colors that were on display! I always thought of the lights being green but there was an amazing mix of green, purple and pink colors. They also weren’t restricted to the north. At various times the amazing light and colors could be seen to the east, west, and even overhead as can be seen in the photo above looking northeast.

Luckily, an iPhone can take great photos of the Northern Lights. I ran into some issues with exposure settings on my Nikon Z6ii camera and only got a few good photos with it. My trusty iPhone camera came through for me and took some great photos, including the first photo in this post! (I’ve sorted out the exposure settings to use on my Nikon so I’m ready to go with it if the lights make another appearance.)