Iceland Aurora

The aurora (the northern and southern lights) is the most wonderous and beautiful natural phenomenon that exist, this incredible light show caused by charged particles accelerated into our upper atmosphere from the Sun, this varies in strength depending on the Sun’s activity at the time. A “solar wind” ejected from the Sun interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field, injecting it with energy and setting up a cycle that catapults electrons into the Earth’s atmosphere at the poles, where they collide with oxygen (green) and nitrogen (red) and cause them to release light—the aurora. For most if not all us astronomers it is on top their bucket list to see a proper light show. Having seen the Aurora a few times before twice from our village in Norfolk and on a flight over the Faroe Islands I was hoping to be treated to something more than I had ever seen before. My images below were captured last week 21th & 22th October on a trip to Iceland with the school. We arrived at our location Hvolsvöllur on the south of the island about 2 hours from Reykjavík, late on the Friday to a dark clear sky. We ensured all those we in charge of were settled and I took a look outside. Almost immediately I was treated to, well for me the, greatest show on earth. I had set the camera up in the top car park away from the building’s lights and set it to record several hundred frames, I learned later that I had accidentally set it to record just 5. I had kicked myself a few times for this since but what I saw in the course of an hour and a half was just spectacular and made up for lack of first night photos. The sky danced for what seemed forever with bright green light. Arcs appearing and fading every few seconds stretching for us from the North East to almost due South. curtains of Colour shimmered and changed shape before my eyes in a cosmic ballet across the sky. Rays of green reached to the heavens and for about 10 minutes we saw a complete auroral oval. I know a full aurora oval can only be seen from space, but what we saw like a huge green onion ring (very strange). Everything I had wished and hoped for was on display that night. The second night cleared later in the night and upon returning at 2.30 in the morning I could again see colours in the darkest sky I have ever seen. There was some residual cloud to the West that was receding slowly but even this was backlit by a beautiful green light. Not anything like as vivid or strong as the previous night but still more impressive than the faint glows I have seen before. Unfortunately, nights 3 & 4 were cloud filled so I left this beautiful island with what was a definite tick on that bucket list.