The northern lights are also known as the aurora borealis, meaning light of dawn. It is said the term was first coined by Galileo in 1623 and is derived from ‘Aurora’, the goddess of the dawn and ‘Boreas’, the northern wind personified.

The aurora borealis are potentially visible under dark skies from late August to mid-April preferably under a clear, cloudless sky. While they occur year-round, they are weaker than sunlight and therefore sightings are not possible from May to July and for most of August. The northern lights take place in different shapes, colors and speeds. Sometimes they can be weak and not really moving, other times they are dancing all over the sky. They can look like a colorful belt across the sky, cloud-like surfaces, rays, drapes and flaming auroras.

The Northern Lights are actually the result of collisions between gaseous particles in the earths atmosphere with charged particles released from the suns atmosphere.