Sit back and relax with this one. It takes a lot of time and talent to create a final work of time-lapse art this breathtaking and impressive. It turns out it takes about two years of planning and dedication to achieve results like these. The Northern Lights have rarely been captured in this amount of splendor and beauty.
Canadian Photographer Richard Gottardo moved to Calgary, Alberta just over two years ago and was immediately bewitched by one of nature's most impressive and engrossing spectacles, aurora borealis. It started out as just normal enthusiast photography fare, heading out to the Rocky Mountains to grab some solid "postcard" style shots of the the flickering green sky. Then, the obsession began, and Gottardo became an amateur meteorologist in an attempt to successfully forecast viewing times most conducive to a favorable photograph. It took a while, but eventually he became extremely apt, which is something immensely obvious to anyone who views this culmination of his talents. He actually put together a webpage just about tracking and planning the capture of the events that you can check out here.
It's not all roses; this is the Canadian North after all, made more difficult by the fact that the Northern Lights also put on their best show during the coldest hours. Along logging roads and in the middle of frozen lakes in places like Calgary, Canmore, Banff, or even all the way up in Jasper, you're looking at temperatures like -31 °F (-35 °C).
While it took two years to shoot, the final editing took just three days, and the time-lapse video itself was assembled and rendered in just a single day. Gottardo says that just basic adjustments were made in the way of editing since the lights are radiant enough on their own.
Be sure to check out Gottardo's website here. You can also follow him on 500px, Flickr, and Twitter.
Stunning video! Was that an Iridium satellite flare that I saw about 55 seconds in the video? I thought the heavy cloud cover was great with the aurora peeking through the clouds.