Breathtaking images of auroras over Earth

Originally published at: Breathtaking images of auroras over Earth | Boing Boing

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Read something recently about the Inspiration 4 crew spending some time" watching movies" on their recent 3 day flight. Seriously??!?!?! Absolutely GOBSMACKED that they couldn’t peel themselves away from the glass dome with views like those.

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Recently returned from a trip to Iceland where we had hoped to see the aurora - unfortunately the weather did not cooperate but it was stunning nonetheless. We were tipped off by a local about the Aurora Forecast app where you can track conditions that give you the best chance of seeing the lights in your area.

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Simply gorgeous aurorae in all of those videos. They end up being so difficult to see from the surface due to excess artificial light that this sort of thing is the only way to get the true effect.

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Iceland’s weather rarely cooperates when you set out to see the aurora. God knows how many hours I have spent outside looking at solid banks of cloud in the hope of a glimpse, all the time thinking that it is nice and cosy inside. Last year we trolled all the way up to Siglufjörður on the edge of the Arctic in the middle of February to see the aurora - and we got a faint green smudge between the blizzards.

We were lucky a couple of weeks ago when I popped outside in Arnarstapi on Snæfellsnes and there was a completely unexpected, and completely awesome aurora that rolled overhead for about an hour.

Good luck on your next trip wherever you choose to go. If you want the best chance of seeing the aurora, look for colder, dryer locations away from the sea such as Northern Sweden, Finland and Northern Canada where the skies tend to be clearer. But Iceland is definitely awesome for all sorts of other reasons.

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We stopped in Arnarstapi last week and snapped a pic of us peeking through the Bárður Snæfellsás before hiking over the arch. It was cold and rainy that day but we were treated to a rare sunny and warm the following day on our drive from Borgarnes to Vik.

Magnificent country. So beautiful

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Glad to hear you got some sunshine on your trip, always a risk to travel to Iceland at this time of year - it can be blue skies, red and orange moss and the first snow on the mountains - or it can be leaden skies, rain and thick fog… sometimes both in the same hour.

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