Why Leelanau County Is One Of The Best Spots In Michigan To Chase The Aurora

For many northern Michiganders, seeing the Northern Lights is a bucket-list dream. Tomorrow evening (Thursday), a panel of aurora experts will be on hand at the Glen Arbor Town Hall to help make that dream come true.

Meet the Michigan Aurora Chasers, a massive and growing Facebook community of Northern Lights enthusiasts who use every tool at their disposal to track down, witness, and photograph the vibrant colors of the aurora as often as possible.

The group was established in January 2021 by Melissa Kaelin, an Ann Arbor-based aurora enthusiast who works in a communications role at the University of Michigan. Most days, Kaelin’s job is all about interviewing “world-class researchers who are studying the solar wind – or the force that brings the Northern Lights display to Earth’s atmosphere.” At night, she uses that knowledge to go out and chase the aurora.

Kaelin launched the Michigan Aurora Chasers group with a goal of helping “people in Michigan and surrounding areas find and photograph the Northern Lights.” In less than three years, it’s grown into a massive community spanning 93,400 people; Kaelin expects it will pass the 100,000-member mark by the end of the year.

Now, Kaelin is bringing her expertise and experience to Leelanau County, which she says is one of the best places in the state to see a Northern Lights display. Kaelin will lead a “Northern Lights Presentation” at the Glen Arbor Town Hall at 7pm on Thursday (November 9), sharing “tips, tools, and techniques” for tracking and seeing the aurora. Two local photographers, Ethan Hohnke and Michele Aucello, will also be hand to share advice on photographing the Northern Lights. The event is hosted by the Glen Arbor Arts Center (GAAC); admission is free for GAAC members and $10 for non-members.

What exactly makes Leelanau County an aurora chaser’s dream? According to Kaelin, that’s a question best answered by science.

In technical terms, the aurora is measured on what is called the planetary K-index, which tracks disturbances to the Earth’s magnetic field. Those disturbances occur due to solar winds, which originate from things happening on the surface of the sun, like coronal holes or solar flares. Solar activity flings electrons toward the Earth, and when those particles interact with the planet’s magnetic field, the aurora is the visible result. Most of the time, those interactions can only be seen from the Earth’s poles. But sometimes, powerful solar eruptions trigger more extreme geomagnetic disturbances, which in turn make the aurora visible farther south.

The K-index assesses geomagnetic activity on a scale of 0 to 9, with higher numbers indicating larger disturbances. If the K-index reading is closer to 9, the aurora will be brighter in the sky and visible farther south. Leelanau County, with its geographic positioning on the 45th Parallel, is a beneficiary of those flare-ups.

“A lot of people don't realize that, even though we need strong activity in Michigan to see the aurora, we only need about a K-6 to see it across the entire state, and only a K-5 anywhere along the 45th parallel,” Kaelin explains. “A K-5 is something that happens quite often, so if you’re in northern Michigan, you’re going to be able to see the aurora pretty frequently.”

Add Leelanau’s wealth of Great Lakes shoreline and relative lack of light pollution, and the county becomes one of the best spots in the United States to observe the Northern Lights.

Hohnke, one of the photographers presenting, knows he’s lucky to call Leelanau County home. Between April 2022 and September 2023, he strung together an 18-month streak where he saw and photographed the Northern Lights at least once per month. The vast majority of those sightings happened close to home. (October 2023, with its ample rainfall and endless cloud cover, broke Hohnke’s streak.)

For Hohnke, the convenience of catching the aurora near where he lives has been a blessing for multiple reasons. In the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hohnke found himself “in a darker place,” feeling sad and aimless after his pre-pandemic dream of opening a hard cider company ground to a halt.

“I caught my first aurora in March of 2021, and it kind of gave me this re-found purpose in life,” Hohnke says. “Prior to that, I hadn’t even had a camera. I just would occasionally capture things on my cell phone.”

Within a month, Hohnke was hooked. He bought his first camera, downloaded apps for tracking the aurora, and set to work learning how to take photos that did justice to the beauty of the Northern Lights. Now, he’s a photographer by trade, working at Vada Color – a fine art printing business in Traverse City – and selling prints, calendars, and canvas wraps under the business name “Captures By Ethan.”

Aucello, another local Northern Lights enthusiast and photographer, says anyone can take up the mantle of aurora chaser. The most important thing, she notes – beyond favorable Earth and space weather conditions, which can be tracked with mobile apps like My Aurora Forecast – is patience. That’s because the top error most beginners make when hunting for the Northern Lights is simply not giving their eyes enough time to adjust to the dark.

“That’s probably the hardest part of aurora chasing, because it is really tempting to pull out your phone and say, ‘Hey, what else is going on? What are other people on the Aurora Chasers app saying?’” Aucello says. “But if you can go out with some friends and plan on just hunkering down, the more your eyes are accustomed to the dark and the more you're going to see.”

“I would recommend that people devote at least three hours to an aurora chase,” Kaelin concurs. “A lot of people go out there as soon as it gets dark, look at the sky for 15 minutes, see nothing, and then give up and go home. If that's the way you're chasing, you’re going to miss the Northern Lights every time.”

Pictured: The aurora from M-22 near Leland, photographed by Ethan Hohnke at 4:43am on March 24, 2023.