iPhone Camera Settings for the Northern Lights (and the Mistakes That Blur Aurora Photos)

An iPhone can take a genuinely good photo of the northern lights. Often the camera sees more than you do: a faint grey glow to the eye comes out green on the screen. What ruins most aurora photos is not the phone but four things: a moving phone, the wrong lens, focus hunting in the dark, and going out on a night with no aurora or full cloud.

Short version: check the aurora forecast, put the phone on something solid, turn the flash off, stay on the 1x lens, and use a 3 to 10 second exposure. The rest of this guide explains each setting, what to change when the aurora is bright or fast, and how to film it.

Before you go out: check the aurora forecast for your area

The settings below do not matter if there is nothing to photograph. Three numbers decide the night: the Kp index (how strong the geomagnetic activity is), cloud cover where you are, and the moon (a bright moon washes out faint aurora). For what Kp you need at your latitude, see the Kp index explained.

The aurora is usually strongest within an hour or two of local midnight, but during storms it can appear as soon as it is dark. Face north in the northern hemisphere (south in the southern), away from street lights.

The settings, one by one

• Flash: off. It lights up the foreground a metre away and does nothing for the sky.
• Lens: the main 1x camera. It has the widest aperture and the biggest sensor, so it gathers far more light than the 0.5x ultra-wide or the telephoto. Do not pinch to zoom.
• Night mode: on, and set the time manually. When the phone is still (on a tripod or propped up), Night mode offers longer exposures, up to 30 seconds on recent iPhones. Tap the Night mode icon and drag the slider. Start at 3 to 5 seconds for a bright, moving aurora and 10 seconds for a faint glow.
• Focus: lock it far away. In the dark, autofocus hunts. Tap and hold on the brightest star or a distant light until you see AE/AF Lock.
• Exposure: pull it down slightly. Drag the sun icon down by a third of a stop or so. It keeps the bright parts of the aurora green instead of washing them out to white.
• ProRAW: optional. On Pro models it keeps more detail for editing later, at the cost of much larger files. The standard format is fine if you just want to share the photo.

Why aurora photos come out blurry

Almost always, the phone moved. Night mode stacks many frames, and even a few millimetres of movement smears stars into streaks. Use a small tripod, or wedge the phone against a wall, a fence post or a rolled-up jacket. Tapping the shutter shakes the phone too: use the 3-second self-timer or a volume button on wired earphones.

The second cause is the aurora itself. A fast-moving display during a storm changes within a second, so a 10-second exposure turns sharp curtains into a green haze. When it is bright and dancing, go shorter: 1 to 3 seconds.

Filming the northern lights on an iPhone

Normal video uses short exposures of 1/30 of a second or less, so it only records a strong aurora. For a faint display, a time-lapse works better: the Camera app's time-lapse mode on a tripod, or an app that takes long exposures back to back. Real-time video of a moving aurora needs exposures of around a quarter of a second, which the built-in Camera app does not offer.

Doing it with Night Cam

I built Night Cam because doing all of this with cold fingers at 1 a.m. is fiddly. Its Tonight screen shows the aurora chance for your area (NOAA's OVATION model and Kp forecast, plus cloud cover and the moon), and optional alerts tell you when it is worth going out. The Aurora preset sets everything above for you: focus locked at infinity, white balance tuned for green aurora, exposure metered from your actual sky, and a short stack of 1-second frames so the curtains stay sharp. Aurora Live records real-time video with quarter-second frames, and Time-lapse does the long version.

The forecast is free, and you get 3 free captures to try the camera. After that, Pro is a one-time purchase and there is a 48-hour Night Pass for a single trip.

Quick checklist

• Forecast checked: Kp high enough for your latitude, low cloud, moon not too bright.
• Away from street lights, facing north (or south below the equator).
• Phone on a tripod or propped up, flash off, 1x lens.
• Focus locked far away, exposure pulled down slightly.
• Night mode 3 to 5 s for a bright aurora, about 10 s for a faint one. Shorter if it is moving fast.