Top tips from , Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2023 Aurorae winner"The Northern Lights are a challenge to capture and to see, and it's always a different show every time: you don't know what structures or features will happen. It's fascinating to watch them, and it's fascinating to capture a single moment of the dance. "When you’re out capturing the Northern Lights, you can't see the colours with your eyes, because you're using your rods in the dark instead of your cones. The camera will capture colours we can't see. "Finding an interesting location is often what makes an image. When I'm going out to shoot, I usually have a few locations in mind and I'm looking for clear skies. "Weather is a really big challenge: you can have extreme winds, you can have snow, you can have rain, you can have full cloud. If there's a good opportunity for a show, I'm willing to drive quite a way to find a clear sky window – and it's usually worth it."I started out as a concert photographer, mainly shooting heavy metal bands. Concerts are dark, you need good low-light gear to photograph a live show, and so it's similar to photographing a night sky subject. "It's curious how I started out photographing heavy metal bands – which are loud and intense, in big crowds – to then photographing the night sky, where there's no one and it's perfectly quiet.", The northern lights, also known as the aurora borealis, are one of nature's most spectacular displays. Auroras occur when charged particles from the sun collide with gases in, The aurora's characteristic wavy patterns and 'curtains' of light are caused by the lines of force in the Earth’s magnetic field. The lowest part of an aurora is typically around 80 miles above the Earth's surface..