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r/northernlights

Northern Lights / Aurora Borealis. The subreddit for photography, artwork and discussion of the northern lights/aurora borealis and the southern lights/aurora australis. Founded 2012 · 45.7K members

45.2K members. The best post we have captured here reached 7.8K upvotes, which works out to 172 per 1,000 members.

172peak upvotes per 1,000 members
45.2Kmembers
7.8Kbest post
91most comments
101posts we track

Open r/northernlights on Reddit ↗

What actually lands here

The mix of post types among everything we have captured. Posting a link where almost nothing but images lands is wasted effort, and this is the fastest way to see it.

48% 29% 24%
Image 48% Gallery 29% Video 24%

The topics it labels

Flairs are the community's own categories, and the closest thing a subreddit has to telling you what it wants.

Photography 29 Northen Lights 1 Southern Lights 1

What the ceiling looks like

The biggest posts we have captured here. Links go to the original on Reddit.

Aurora dancing outside my house

↑ 7.8K 💬 60 video 2025

The most colorful Aurora I have ever seen

↑ 6.1K 💬 48 image 2025

real time aurora tonight!

↑ 5.2K 💬 46 video 2025

I took this photo last Oct 8th, it was one of the most powerful auroras I've ever seen

↑ 4.3K 💬 22 image 2024

The Northern Lights in Washington State

↑ 4.1K 💬 16 image 2024

Slept under this in Iceland 🌌

↑ 4.1K 💬 73 video 2025

real time aurora

↑ 3.9K 💬 19 video 2025

NO, I AM OBSESSED

↑ 3.9K 💬 22 video 2024

Real time video of an intense substorm tonight

↑ 3.8K 💬 47 video 2025

The best inflight entertainment ever

↑ 3.8K 💬 52 video 2025

Communities its size

Within four times the member count either way, so the comparison is fair. Sorted by upside.

r/northernlights, in numbers

Answered from the posts ViralHunt holds from this community, not from Reddit's own about page.

What is r/northernlights?
r/northernlights ("Northern Lights / Aurora Borealis") describes itself this way: The subreddit for photography, artwork and discussion of the northern lights/aurora borealis and the southern lights/aurora australis. It was founded in 2012 and has 45.7K members.
How many members does r/northernlights have?
r/northernlights has about 45.2K members. ViralHunt has tracked 101 of its posts; the biggest reached 7.8K upvotes, which is 172 per 1,000 members.
What is the most viral post on r/northernlights?
"Aurora dancing outside my house" reached 7.8K upvotes and 60 comments in 2025, the highest score among the posts we hold from r/northernlights.
What subreddits are similar to r/northernlights?
Communities of a comparable size we track: r/greenland, r/Leakednews, r/LetsDiscussThis, r/stevehofstetter, r/StrikeAtPsyche, r/InvictaSolaris.
What kind of posts do best on r/northernlights?
Of the posts we hold, 48% are image posts and 29% are gallery posts.
When is the best time to post on r/northernlights?
Across 101 timestamped posts we hold, the slots whose posts averaged the highest score are Monday at 23:00 UTC (3K avg upvotes), Monday at 13:00 UTC (2.3K avg upvotes), Monday at 18:00 UTC (2.1K avg upvotes). The busiest day is Saturday. For Reddit as a whole, see the best time to post on Reddit page.
How many upvotes does a post need to reach the top of r/northernlights?
The 20th-best post we hold from r/northernlights has 2.8K upvotes, so that is roughly the bar for the top twenty.

See what is climbing here before you write

ViralHunt tracks Reddit and eight other networks, records how every post grows, and puts what is taking off in front of your team in one list.

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Every figure here is what ViralHunt has captured from r/northernlights, not everything the community has ever posted. We deliberately do not publish an average score: our sample is weighted toward a community's best posts, so an average would be flattering and wrong. Peak per 1,000 members is computed the same way for every community listed. See how we measure.