See pictures of the northern lights at visitnorway.com - the official travel guide to Norway.
Seeing the northern lights is a jaw-dropping and mystical moment. The lights are at their most frequent in late autumn and winter/early spring. October, February and March are the best months for auroral observations. The highest northern lights frequency is between 6 pm and 1 am. In order to get full value from the show you should avoid the full moon and places with a lot of light as they make the experience considerably paler.
When dreaming about seeing the northern lights, you must remember that you are at the complete mercy of nature. Observing the aurora borealis is often a tug of war between your patience and the aurora itself.
Sometimes the northern lights come all together, dancing across the sky, orange, purple, green and sunset red. Other times they are simply curtains of computer-screen green or a twister of wispy light. The northern lights are never the same twice.
Perhaps not so surprisingly, the northern lights’ spectacle has created as many legends as there have been people watching. The northern lights were traditionally associated with sound by the Sami. During the Viking Age, the northern lights were the armour of the Valkyrie warrior virgins. And according to Japanese legend it means good luck to conceive a child under the northern lights.
Reality, if not as poetic, is equally impressive. The sun is the father of the auroras. During large explosions and flares, huge quantities of particles are thrown out of the sun and into deep space. These clouds travel through space with speeds varying from 300 to 1,000 kilometres per second. When the particles collide with the gases in the earth’s atmosphere they glow, producing a fantastic array of colour.
If you want to create your own northern light visit http://www.visitnorway.com/uk/mynorthernlights/