Aurora
Seeing the Northern Lights was the main reason for going to Iceland. After a couple of nights to acclimate to the timezone (7 hours ahead of our normal timezone) we booked a tour with a company that drives you out of the city to a dark location that is free of clouds. Normally we don’t do tour groups, but since we weren’t familiar with the area, it was nice to let someone else drive in the dark. After we got familiar with the area, we drove ourselves multiple nights to see the lights, and we saw them every time we went out.
Seeing the lights in person was not as impressive as a total solar eclipse. In real life, they aren’t as green as in the pictures. They were still cool to see, the most exciting part was when you could see them moving or flowing in the sky. It was also cool to see the Milky Way and shooting stars. Tons of stars are visible when you get out away from the city.
We took a lot of pictures. Unfortunately, our phones/cameras are old-ish/cheap-ish and just mostly produced black images. We didn’t have the settings available that allow you to have long exposure shots. When we went out with the tour group, they took our picture with their camera.
Here is the best one of us from the tour group. (they had a light to light up our faces)
Here is the best picture from our phones. (The white glow above the horizon and below the aurora are the city lights of Reykjavik)
