Aurora

Here's something we haven't discussed yet but I'm hoping it will happen.

Aurora Borealis

There is a reasonable chance we may see some aurora activity during our stay in Iceland. Iceland is directly below the strongest concentration of the Aurora Borealis Annulus – The Green Belt – an oval of cosmic light that circles the earth off axis, favorably in Iceland's direction.

Click here for the equivalent of a weather forecast for the Aurora Borealis (be sure to click on the Iceland/Europe map). Before we go, we'll be able to predict the likelihood of seeing lights.

And, of course, we're staying at the Northern Light Inn. They have a nice page of Aurora photos taken at the Inn.

Here's some science from the web about this phenomenon. I'm sure we all like science.

Aurorae are produced by the collision of charged particles from Earth's magnetosphere, mostly electrons but also protons and heavier particles, with atoms and molecules of Earth's upper atmosphere (at altitudes above 80 km (50 miles). They originate from the Sun and arrive at the vicinity of Earth in the relatively low-energy solar wind. When the trapped magnetic field of the solar wind is favourably oriented (principally southwards) it reconnects with Earth's magnetic field, and solar particles enter the magnetosphere and are swept to the magnetotail. Further magnetic reconnection accelerates the particles towards Earth.

The collisions in the atmosphere electronically excite atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere. The excitation energy can be lost by light emission or collisions. Most aurorae are green and red emission from atomic oxygen. Molecular nitrogen and nitrogen ions produce some low level red and very high blue/violet aurorae. The light blue colors are produced by ionic nitrogen and the neutral nitrogen gives off the red and purple color with the rippled edges. Different gases interacting with the upper atmosphere will produce different colors, caused by the different compounds of oxygen and nitrogen. The level of solar wind activity from the Sun can also influence the color of the aurorae.

Both Jupiter and Saturn have magnetic fields much stronger than Earth's (Jupiter's equatorial field strength is 4.3 gauss, compared to 0.3 gauss for Earth), and both have large radiation belts. Aurora has been observed on both, most clearly with the Hubble Space Telescope. Uranus and Neptune have also been observed to have aurorae.