Northern lights corona in the sky last spring.
Photo/Sævar Helgi Bragason
There’s a good chance of colorful aurora borealis lighting up the sky over western Iceland tonight and tomorrow night between 9 p.m. and midnight, according to meteorologist Einar Sveinbjörnsson.
“If cloud conditions are favorable, we could get a lovely northern lights show. The only spoiler is the moon — it’s large and bright, having been full just yesterday,”
Sveinbjörnsson told mbl.is.
He explained that the best aurora conditions usually occur when the moon is new or below the horizon, as its brightness can wash out colors on the southern sky. “In that case, you just look north,” he adds.
Sveinbjörnsson noted that the sun has been highly active in recent days:
“We’re probably at the peak of this eleven-year solar cycle, so these coronal ejections and streams of charged particles from the sun are at their strongest right now. That means we can expect colorful displays at regular intervals,”
he said.