Northern Lights Explained

The bright dancing lights of the aurora are actually collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun that enter earth's atmosphere.

The temperature above the sun surface is millions of degrees Celsius. At this temperature, collisions between gas molecules are frequent and explosive particles enter the earth's atmosphere and collide with gas particles. These collisions emit light that we perceive as the dancing lights above the magnetic poles of the northern and southern hemispheres. They are known as 'Aurora borealis' in the north and 'Aurora australis' in the south.

Auroral displays appear in many colours although pale green and pink are the most common. The lights of the Aurora generally extend from 80 kilometres (50 miles) to as high as 640 kilometres (400 miles) above the earth's surface. The northern lights occur most frequently in a belt of radius 2500 km centered on the magnetic north pole. This so-called auroral zone extends over Iceland, northern Scandinavia, the southern tip of Greenland and continuing over northern Canada, Alaska and along the northern coast of Siberia.

The main reason you travel to Iceland during the winter months, an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and the arctic circle, is most likely to see the Northern Lights — and we understand it perfectly! 

Iceland is not particularly known for its friendship with the sun during summer, but we make up for it with magnificent Northern Lights activity during winter. Optimal time for viewing is between September and early April.

The auroras are not visible during the day, but can only be seen when it is pitch dark out. Best time, in our experience, is from 20:00 and into the late hours of the night.

To be able to see the lights you need three things to happen: solar activity, clear skies and darkness. Below are a couple of predictive websites that record activity levels, cloud coverage etc. that are good to check before venturing out.

University of Alaska Fairbanks
Understand the northern lights better and watch them in real-time. See the daily forecast of geomagnetic activity and check the long term Kp index forecast.

Icelandic Met Office
Stay up to date with the weather conditions and cloud cover to maximise your chances of sightings. 

Although we recommend first of all to enjoy the moment and watch the sky come to life and light up in real-time, there are a few tricks you can use to capture the lights on camera.

• Use manual settings on both camera and lens
• Turn off flash and image stabilisation
• Set ISO to 1600
• Use lowest aperture (f-stop) as possible
• Set shutter speed to 10-20 sec.
• Use tripod for stabilisation
• Set focus by zooming in on a star or the moon
• Remotely release shutter or set to 2 sec. self-timer

Take a couple of test shots and adjust the settings as needed. If the image is too bright or too dark, try to play with the shutter speed or ISO. It is important that the camera is still for the duration of the photograph being taken, and so it is often challenging to capture the lights on a moving boat. Best to chat with our onboard staff for the best set up and advise.

- In old Icelandic folklore, it was believed that the northern lights would ease the pain of childbirth. Only pregnant women were not to look at them before giving birth, if they did, it was believed that they would give birth to cross-eyed children. -

- It has been said that if the northern lights moved very fast in the sky — that meant war was taking place somewhere in the world. -

- Native Americans often whistled at the Northern Lights to challenge them to come closer so they could whisper messages to the dead. -