Northern lights Höfn tonight

Hornafjörður is a wide sheltered bay with Vatnajökull glacier filling the northwestern horizon on clear nights, its white dome rising above the flat coastal plain. The north shore gives a dark, north-facing position away from the modest light dome of Höfn itself. The fishing harbour in the foreground provides boat masts and jetty lights as compositional elements without being bright enough to affect sky darkness. No settlement exists to the north or east of the bay, so the northern arc of sky is unobstructed. Calm nights produce reflections across the bay surface. The access road north of town is paved and accessible in winter.

Vestrahorn is a 454m twin-peaked mountain that rises directly from black sand beach at the end of the Stokksnes peninsula. The jagged granite peaks are one of Iceland's most distinctive geological formations and the beach is routinely used as a foreground for aurora photography. Access is via a small toll gate at the Höfn Viking café on the approach road - typically around 1,000 ISK, open late in aurora season. The beach faces south but Vestrahorn's silhouette frames any aurora to the north and northeast. The car park at the beach base has space for multiple vehicles. Bortle 2 sky throughout the peninsula with no settlement in any direction except the minor café building.

The Ring Road northwest from Höfn runs directly below the Vatnajökull glacier tongue for 80 km before reaching the Jökulsárlón lagoon. The landscape along this stretch is Breiðamerkursandur - the black sand plain below the glacier face - completely flat and completely uninhabited. The glacier wall rises to the north, the Atlantic lies to the south, and the sky overhead is Bortle 1-2 throughout. Pull-ins along the Ring Road give access to the sand plain. Incorporating this drive into aurora watching time makes sense: conditions anywhere along this corridor are as good as or better than the lagoon itself, and you avoid the car park crowds at Jökulsárlón.