It had been a long day – we traveled to Godafoss Falls, Dimmuborgir lava fields (Home of the Twelve Yule Lads), and Námaskarð mud lake (lots of sulfur and boiling water) for sightseeing, followed by lunch at the Sel Hotel Mývatn.
After we returned to the Hotel Kea in Akureyri, we rested for a few minutes, then headed out for a quick shopping expedition to buy neck warmers and better gloves. We also attended the National Trust reception for the tour and were among the last to leave – so I wasn’t thrilled about going out for another aurora-hunting trip, especially since the Kp index was only 2 and the [NOAA Space Weather Aurora Dashboard (https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/aurora-dashboard-experimental) hadn’t shown much of a chance of aurora over Iceland all day.
I was all set to kick off my shoes and deal with the day’s photos when I took one last look at the dashboard and discovered that the nowcast suddenly showed a very good chance of aurora here. So we bundled up and met the group just before the buses took off for the viewing location.
The trip took about 20 minutes; the skies were dark outside the bus and it was cold (good thing we’d bought new gloves!). I was enjoying the view and looking for the Milky Way…but there was more to see.
The area just to the left of the Milky Way was glowing. Subtly at first, and then more brightly. It looked a lot like the auroras we’d seen earlier in the week.
But things got more colorful and intense pretty quickly.
After about an hour, we had to head back to the hotel. The display was still going strong…I could even see it through the tinted window of the bus on our way back to town.
When we got back to the hotel, there was still a little bit of brightness visible in the sky, but the city lights overwhelmed it and I didn’t even bother to take a photo.
I’m glad I made that final check of the aurora dashboard!