Day 1 part 3: Northern Lights Extra tour

In an effort to make sure that I did see the Northern Lights, I book my own bus tour for 9 pm – midnight my first night in town. There are many many bus tours offering this effort. My choice was $55 (about the same as others), had ipads in 12 languages to explain phenomena, extra coats to rent and free tripods. Also, if we didn’t see the lights, we could reschedule anytime in next 2 years. We stopped 3 different places and saw some minimal NL. [3 pictures of myself wouldn't be downloaded here. They are posted on the tour's website https://www.facebook.com/reykjaviksightseeing/ . Scroll down to the photos, click see all, and search for the album for Oct. 22nd (I’m in a black hooded coat, maybe glasses).] At all the stops, it was quite cold and windy. As opposed to the daytime, the nighttime weather out in the boonies was chilly.
Part 1 of NL explanation; (see Day 2 for more): Created by strange storms on the sun, the Northern Lights need clear winter skies to appear. Great storms on the sun (i.e., solar winds) send gusts of charged solar particles hurtling across space. If Earth is in the path of the particle stream, our planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere react. When the charged particles from the sun strike atoms and molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, they excite those atoms, causing them to light up or move to a higher-energy state (similar to what happens in the neon lights). When the electrons drop back to a lower energy state, they release a photon: light.
The otherworldly colors of the Northern Lights and Southern Lights have fueled folklore for millennia. In Norse mythology, the aurora was a fire bridge to the sky built by the gods. Actually, colors are made when charged particles from Sun excite/ionize oxygen or nitrogen. Red is oxygen at 200km or nitrogen below 90 km. Green is oxygen at 90-200 km. Purple and blue: nitrogen under 90 km. Pink and yellow: mix of red and green or blue.

Pictures: 1-3: city from my hotel room, 4: Northern Lights and meRead more