Thinking of getting the Nikon D3500 24.2 MP. Is it any good to take pictures of Aurora Borealis?

Thinking of getting the Nikon D3500 24.2 MP. Is it any good to take pictures of Aurora Borealis?

Added (1). I have a year to master it… Hopefully that's enough time.

Yeah it has a really high ISO setting, which means it picks up more light. In reality the northern lights aren't colorful and don't move quickly, the only way you can pickup the northern lights is by using a tripod and taking a long exposure photo, so you can do that with a lot of cameras, but one with a really high ISO is always helpful.

It'll be okay but you could do better.

The exposure needed for aurora photos is an ISO of about 1600, an aperture of f/2.8 for 20 seconds. The kit lens that comes with Nikon's D3xxx series of cameras is the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. The smaller aperture of f/3.5 just means you'll have to use longer exposures, which should be no problem.

The problem is that the 18-55mm, at 18mm, is not all that wide. It's the equivalent of a 28mm lens in 35mm format. You should consider either buying or renting a wider lens for your trip. Consider something that starts off at the 10mm position. Eight millimeters in difference may not sound like at the much, but consider it's an 80% difference.

A year of use is more than enough time for you to get use to the camera providing that you use it on a regular basis and read through the owners manual a few times.

One thing to consider is that the Nikon D3xxx series is not weather proof at all. All of Pentax's DSLRs are weather proof and they all have in-body image stabilization, too. The Pentax K-70 is considerably better than any of Nikon's D3xxx, D5xxx and D7xxx series of cameras.