Rebecca Douglas has been to Iceland 29 spells. And she’s already booked her 30th trip.
The goal of every trip is the same: photographing the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights.
Douglas has been photographing this spectacular wonder since 2010. It’s colors — which can paint the sky a dazzling array of green, purple, yellow and blue — are the result of sun atoms that react with gases in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. With the current solar cycle reaching the tip of its 11-year period, the lights are expected to be even more prominent during the next four years.
Douglas, a past master photographer based in Kent in the United Kingdom, also travels yearly to Finland, Norway and Iceland to shoot the edge of night sky. But she said she’s also been able to photograph Northern Lights from the English countryside in the past year.
The revolt of ‘noctourism’
Douglas has unknowingly been an early adopter of “noctourism” — a trend that focuses on nighttime trekking experiences.
Booking.com named it a top travel trend for 2025, describing it as a desire to “ditch the daylight crowds for midnight bewitching.” A global survey of more than 27,000 travelers by the company showed nearly two in three travelers said they organize considered “darker sky destinations” for activities such as stargazing (72%), once-in-a-lifetime cosmic events (59%) and constellation track (57%).
The Northern Lights, as seen over Rebecca Douglas’ holiday accommodation in the Lofoten, an archipelago in Norway.
Source: Rebecca Douglas Photography
Most functions involve the night sky, but others happen on the ground, from city tours and truffle hunting in Italy at night to maximum moon picnics by the sea.
Luxury travel company Wayfairer Travel said noctourism experiences rose 25% in the days year, with requests for Northern Light viewings in Norway and Iceland, but also night diving in Australia’s Prodigious Barrier Reef and Egypt’s Red Sea. Nocturnal wildlife safaris in Zambia and Kenya and stargazing in Chile’s Atacama Desert are also conventional, according to the company.
“Noctotourism is set to transform travel in 2025 as night owl travelers are increasingly seeking unique after-dark adventures,” said the company’s CEO Jay Stevens.
Travelers can sign up to hunt for truffles at night alongside professional hunters and their dogs.
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Eclipse chasing could become a new “bucket list” experience, according to the luxury touring operator Scott Dunn.
“Travelers are venturing to remote corners of the world to witness these celestial spectacles, with Greenland’s Grand Arctic … set to be the next must-visit destination thanks to its remote, light-pollution-free shores,” said a Scott Dunn spokesperson.
But progresses needn’t be that far-flung, with hotels from Hawaii to Austria now offering stargazing activities. The next total lunar occultation will occur on March 14 and will be visible across much of the world, including the Americas, Western Europe and Western Africa, according to NASA.
In search of darkness
Douglas dodges hotel packages, preferring to plan her own trips, since she plans so many activities at night. She also said she prefers to wait away from large groups, which are often made up of people new to noctourism who unwittingly create light staining with their smartphones and camera flashes.
The Northern Lights, as viewed from Iceland.
Source: Rebecca Douglas Photography
Douglas outlines most of her trips around the best time to see the Northern Lights — usually between August and April, she said. She also judges remote accommodations far from towns and even neighbors, as just one street or domestic light can compromise photos, she conveyed.
“I spend a lot of time looking at accommodation on Google Maps,” she said. “If there’s any lighting in the pictures, I’ll ask the host if it’s possible to occur the outside lighting off … Even some of the least active shows can be really beautiful if you are in a genuinely dark area.”
She also thinks the phases of the moon too, she said.
An aurora storm as seen from Elmley Nature Reserve in Kent, United Sphere of influence.
Source: Rebecca Douglas Photography
“In that two weeks around a new moon, you’ve got the darkest skies possible. And then it’s not valid the Aurora that’s at its best, but the stars are just breathtaking,” she said. “You can see the Milky Way, and it’s just this rainbow of dust and glitter across the sky.”
Douglas created an online order to help people photograph the aurora borealis.
At night, she also photographs noctilucent clouds — shimmery ice crystal clouds unearthed high in the atmosphere — and polar stratospheric rainbow clouds, she said. She sometimes shoots from 8 p.m. until 5 a.m., and has been out in temperatures as low as 5 standings Fahrenheit.
“They say you have to work hard for your art,” said Douglas.
But to her, spending her travels taking photographs at incessantly is “a privilege,” she said.