Mysterious lights were seen in the sky in various locations in Iceland yesterday. First a woman reported such a sighting while driving on the Ring Road below Mt. Hafnarfjall near Borgarnes in west Iceland yesterday morning.
The northern lights seen from Reykjanes in southwest Iceland in the night of October 25. Photo and copyright: Olgeir Andrésson. Source: olgeir.zenfolio.com.
The light seemed to dance in the sky above Mt. Akrafjall, one of the mountains that can be seen from Reykjavík. It was in fact divided into three bright lights which moved around and could clearly be seen for more than half a minute, visir.is reports.
In Dalvík in north Iceland visitors to the local swimming pool noticed a very bright white light for a few seconds above Svarfadadalur valley between 6 and 7 pm yesterday evening. The light did not resemble a shooting star.
“We don’t know what it was but it was very bright and white,” described one of the swimming pool guests, meteorologist Elín Björk Unnarsdóttir, to visir.is, adding, “it was sort of shaped like dental floss.”
She has seen a shooting star, Unnarsdóttir said, and that was not what it was. She and the other swimming pool guests wondered whether it could have been fireworks or a torch but later concluded that couldn’t be.
Astrologist Saevar Helgi Bragason, who is among those running the astronomy website stjornufraedi.is, stated that larger shooting stars are sometimes this bright and finds it the most likely explanation for what the Dalvík pool goers witnessed.
In fact, a spectacular shooting star lit up part of south Iceland in early November 2009.
At the same time as the strange light was seen in Dalvík, a bright white light was spotted nearby, in the sky to the southwest of Akureyri. It had a tail of multicolored lights.
Last night a father and daughter spotted bright green lights to the northeast of the Salahverfi neighborhood in Kópavogur outside Reykjavík which burned for a few seconds. No explanations have been provided for these lights.
In the night of October 25, there was a magnificent northern lights display above Reykjanes peninsula in southwest Iceland. They not only had the more common green and purple color but also flaming red.
Photographer Olgeir Andrésson, who caught pictures of the northern lights, told icelandreview.com, that strangely, they had only been visible in the southern part of the sky. Andrésson added that visibility of the northern lights in Iceland is expected to peak next year.
In other parts of the world there have also been unusual sightings of northern lights lately; in Norway flaming red northern lights were also spotted and inhabitants of the American southern states Georgia, Kentucky and Alabama were in for a magnificent northern lights display earlier this week, which is very rare in that part of the world.
Apparently, the northern lights were caused by a particularly strong solar flare. In the coming days, Icelanders can expect a continuum of the light show, provided the night sky is clear.
Click here to see Andrésson’s pictures of the northern lights in Iceland earlier this week.
ESA
