Time To Start Planning for the Northern Lights

It’s almost time for the Aurora Borealis to illuminate the night sky above Iceland and other Arctic regions. Which means that now is the time to start planning your Northern Lights trip with Iceland ProTravel.

You can spot them in destinations close to the Arctic Circle between September and April. The lights can shine in many different colors, from green to purple and even red, transforming the night sky into a magical dance floor.

The illumination is created when gaseous particles in the Earth’s atmosphere collide with charged particles released from the sun’s atmosphere. The charged protons and electrons are hurled into the atmosphere when so-called solar storms occur on the surface of the sun.

The different colors that we might see depend on the kind of gas particles that are colliding with the particles coming from the sun’s atmosphere, and their distance from Earth.

For example, the red Northern Lights are rarely seen because the oxygen molecules that produced them are about 200 miles away from earth.

On the other hand, the most common color is a pale yellowish green produced by oxygen molecules that are just 60 miles above the earth’s surface. It might not happen very often, but there are even blue or purple-red Northern Lights produced by nitrogen.

Learn even more about the Northern Lights — and how Iceland ProTravel can help you see them — in this excellent blog by Sophia Kaletta and Marie Callsen:

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