Photo of Northern Lights in a snowy mountain landscape

© Nickolas Warner

Nature’s Light Show

How’s this for a night-light? This award-winning photo by Nickolas Warner shows swirls of glowing green light over Alaska. That dazzling display is known as the northern lights, or aurora borealis (uh-ROR-uh bor-ee-AL-uhs). Auroras are colorful bands of light that are most visible in areas close to Earth’s poles. Auroras form when electrically charged particles from the sun crash into gases in Earth’s atmosphere. These collisions cause the sky to light up in ribbons of bright colors.

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