Of the many wonders this trip offers, the two highlights are viewing and photographing the aurora without the interference from moonlight (weather permitting) and experiencing the haunting beauty of Iceland. With this in mind, most days of the tour will begin no earlier than 10:30 a.m., giving travelers who stay up late watching the aurora a chance to sleep in each morning. Since we’ll be exploring Reykjavík and the southern region of this island nation, each day’s activities will cover relatively small areas. This means that even though we’ll see a lot of breathtaking geologic scenery, our longest day of sightseeing will be no more than eight hours.
 
    Each clear night in the countryside, we’ll stand watch for the northern lights — eerie, ever-changing glows in the sky caused when energetic particles from the Sun slam into Earth’s upper atmosphere, literally electrifying it. Because these particles are channeled by our planet’s magnetic field, they work their magic where the field is strongest, near the magnetic poles. Iceland, close to the north magnetic pole, is blessed with frequent and spectacular auroral displays. They take on many forms: undulating curtains, pulsing rays, and dramatic overhead coronas, or crowns. Their colors — green with red, purple, or blue — range from subtle to vibrant.
 
    Iceland lies alongside an area of one of the most active weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere. The Icelandic low, about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) to the southwest, is the source of a frequent and endless supply of weather systems that move past the island, each one bringing its own retinue of clouds and precipitation. The Gulf Stream waters that bathe Iceland also warm the air and fill it with moisture. As this warm, humid air encounters the colder water from the Arctic basin west and north of the island, fog and low clouds form and produce gray weather (and nearly constant wind) even when an active low is not present. Many locales claim that if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes — but this is especially true in Iceland!