It’s just over 6-years since my last arctic adventure, which was a trip along the Norwegian coast by ship from Bergen to Kirkenes and back, stopping along the way for deliveries and pick-ups at 30-ports.  On that occasion we had good views of the Aurora Borealis whilst at sea somewhere north of the Arctic Circle and with some difficulty, I was eventually able to obtain some images (see below). Standing outside on ther deck at +70^o North latitude in February was incredibly cold, making camera operation difficult, whilst the ship’s movement from side-to-side and up-and-down was hardly conducive to photography of the night sky!

This time, I’m just back from circumnavigating the island of Iceland by car from mid to late-March, which is described more fully on my other website Round The Bend here.  It was timed to avoid the worst of winter conditions and, with darkness quickly disappearing as Spring / Summer beckoned, maybe still get a chance to see and image the Northern Lights again – this time on terra firma.  Despite such planning, severe snow, ice and very strong winds were common for much of the time but, when it was clear the scenery was spectacular and, on a couple of evenings later in the trip, the Aurora Borealis put on a great show.

Situated just below the Arctic Circle, mostly between 64^o and 66^o latitude, Iceland is well known both for its geology and sightings of the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights.  As a geologist, I travelled to Iceland primarily to view the rocks and though it was getting late in the season, I was also keen to see the Aurora again if possible.  Given the days of bad weather it was therefore fortunate to have clear skies and good views of the Northern Lights on two separate evenings whilst on the south coast, first at Gerdi near Jökulsárlόn and later just south of Kirkjubaejarkklaustur.

Despite my previous experience, each aurora is different and on this occasion I found using a Canon 700D DSLR mounted on a Gorilla Pod, using a Sigma wide-angle lens set at a focal length of 10mm f3.5 + ISO 3,200 and 10 second exposures generally produced a good image.  It seemed that we were on the southern edge of the aurora on the first night at Gerdi (see top of the page), which was therefore weaker but exhibited a striking purple colour (helium).  The following night the aurora was much stronger, this time mostly green (oxygen) with red and purple fringing (nitrogen & helium) and generally much more active, resulting in some great views with the naked eye and even better images (see below).