Northern Lights Tours

The Kp Index comes from the German, Kennziffer Planetarische, which means planetary index number. The Kp Index was developed by German geophysicist and statistician Julias Bartels around 1939.

It is a scale used to express disturbances in the horizontal component of the Earth’s magnetic field caused by solar activity. The scale ranges from 0 to 9, with 9 being the highest level of disturbance.

• 0-2 Low: Little to no activity. This doesn’t mean there will be absolutely no lights, but it’s unlikely.
• 2-3 Moderate: There will likely be some aurora activity.
• 4-6 High: There will be northern lights. Cross your fingers and hope you’re in the right place at the right time under clear skies.
• 7-9 Very High: It’s your lucky day! The skies will likely be filled with a dazzling display at some point during the night.

For the more adventurous traveler, Gray Line also offers the Hveravellir Winter Adventure Tour, which takes you on a 72 hour Super Jeep excursion through Iceland’s wilderness with plenty of opportunities to see the northern lights.

In the north, they are called aurora borealis or northern lights because they occur in the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere, this same phenomenon goes by different names; aurora australis and southern lights.

The earliest mention of the northern lights in recorded human history can be found in Chinese writings that date all the way back to 2600 BC. And in many ancient cultures, it was thought that the northern lights were the souls of the dead ascending to the afterlife. The aurora has even been seen as omens of good by some and evil by others.

It wasn’t until 1790 that Henry Cavendish was able to use triangulation to determine that the light from the aurora was produced at 100-130 (60 miles) above the surface of the Earth. And around 1901, through his terrella experiment, Norwegian physicist Kristian Birkeland concluded that the lights were caused by currents flowing through the gas in Earth’s upper atmosphere.

• Make sure your camera has a manual setting. Set both your camera and lens to manual mode so that you can manually change the aperture and focus.
• A wide-angle lens is preferable but not necessary. Having a wide-angle lens is a plus as it will allow you to capture the full scope and grandeur of the lights.
• Turn OFF your flash.
• Turn off image stabilization.
• Use a remote, self-timer, or an app to release the shutter remotely. Because you will be using a long exposure, even the slight movement caused by pressing the shutter can blur your image.

• Set the lens’ focus to infinity. Because the lights are so far away, you’ll want the camera to be focused on the furthest possible point. This can be a challenge in the dark, so it’s best to do this before it gets dark out.
  Using the manual mode on your lens, focus to infinity. If need be, use tape or a marker (brightly colored to show up in the dark) to mark the setting. If you end up having to do this at night, pick the furthest light source around (you can use a flashlight for this too) and focus on it.
  Be careful not to change the focus setting while waiting for the lights.
• As for metering, different cameras work best using different modes. For Nikons, you’ll want to set it to a matrix or center-weighted average metering and for Canons use evaluative metering.
• Using manual mode, set the lens aperture or f-stop as wide as possible, that is the lowest f-number that your lens can go.
• Set your exposure according to the movement of the lights. For particularly active lights, 5-10 seconds will do, but for more subtle and/or slow-moving lights, you can try 20-25 seconds.
• Your ISO setting will depend on the intensity of the lights. If the lights are quite bright, start with ISO 800 and go up from there should the lights be dimmer or begin at ISO 1600 if they are dim and go down from there.
• In order to capture the colors of the lights as accurately as possible, custom set your white balance to Kelvin 3,000 or so and adjust accordingly.