A Dome of Colors

Being at the right time in the right place TWAN photographer managed to capture this magical moment of extremely active Aurora Borealis over mountains in Lapland, northern Sweden. Two brightest planets in the night sky, Venus and Jupiter, are also captured on the left side of this 360-degree all-sky view. There is a deep connection between people of the far north and these majestic dancing lights. Sami people in Lapland (northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and some areas of Russia) traditionally believed that the northern lights were the energies of the souls of the departed. Eskimos in some areas described aurora as the dancing spirits. Some Indians in the North America described it as a fire in the far north, a reminder from the creator of the Earth. Aurora is produced by the collision of high-energy charged particles, originated from the sun, with atoms and molecules of Earth’s atmosphere (at altitudes above 80 km).