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ziba bod
http://www.sgo.fi/Overview/overview.php
If you plan to go to Alaska to se the Nothern lights, be prepared to go to the norhernmost regions. Places like Anchorage are too far south - aim for the polar circle, or even further north.
And, plan for the long term. Aurora borealis follows sunspot activity in an 11-year cyclic pattern, which nowadays is at its very bottom. Actually, activity should have been rising for more than a year now, but it hasn't happened, and noone knows why. Whatever the reason, there is very little to see now, but in five to six years, sunspot activity and nothern lights may be at a peak again.
Even at sunspot peak, you cannot be garanteed to see anything as grand as shown in these photos! I live at 63 degrees north (Anchorage is at 61.1 degrees, the polar circle at 66.3 degrees), and all we have this far south are the pale greenish-blueish colors. I have never seen reds, violets, yellows or saturated green or blue anywhere south of the polar circle. Even further north, the multicolored variants are not that common, not even in sunspot peak years.
Note: If you (in a few years time) go to see the northern lights, don't bother to try to photograph them. The pictures in this series have been made with very sensitive cameras, large f-stop lenses (such as f/1.4 or f/1.8) and long exposure times - maybe several seconds. The lights are not at all blurred (the "cloudy" impression is due to the long exposure times), but more like huge stacks of shining needles dancing back and forth. A handheld pocket camera will capture none of this, but give you all blacks.
Life can be like Colors of a Rainbow.
THE PHENOMENON CALLED LIFE THROUGH COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES .. http://lifeshortstory.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/pushing-the-papers/