Amazing Auroras Shimmer Over Norway in Incredible Video

Auroras Over Norway Video Frame
Auroras dance in the skies over Norway in a video from Level 4 production company. Image uploaded Jan. 15, 2014. (Image credit: Level 4)

Multicolored cosmic lights dance over mountains, bridges and lakes in an amazing new video that highlights the beauty of the northern lights as seen from Norway.

The spectacular video of Norway's northern lights — entitled "Sixth Element" and produced by the production company Level 4 — runs nearly five minutes in duration and showcases the aurora borealis in the sky near Nordeisa, Troms, Norway, with an ethereal musical score setting the mood. The footage was captured from August to mid-November 2013.

"Quite a bit of time was spent finding the right music to go along with it, we did quite a few rough cuts with different music just to see how the video panned out, and when we finally found 'Promise' by Thomas Bergersen the rough cut was quite close to the finished version," Level 4's Tommy Richardsen told SPACE.com via email. [See more amazing photos of the northern lights]

Auroras dance in the skies over Norway in a video from Level 4 production company. Image uploaded Jan. 15, 2014. (Image credit: Level 4)

Particularly striking images from the video include meteors streaming overhead as green northern lights flow through the sky. The Milky Way provides a backdrop for a green and red glow above snow-topped mountains.

"We shot this video with the intent to showcase what we can do for future clients," Richardsen said. "For this video we used quite a bit of double coverage so we could intercut between scenes with the same aurora at the same time, most of the scenes was shot using ultra wide angle lenses, while we sparingly used 24mm shots and fisheye shots."

Auroras are created when showers of charge particles blown out from the sun are caught in Earth's magnetic field. Some of these particles are directed toward the poles, where the strike neutral particles in the planet's atmosphere, creating the colorful lights. The northern lights are called aurora borealis, while their southern counterparts are the aurora australis.

Other planets in the solar system also have auroras. Scientists have observed auroras at the poles of both Jupiter and Saturn.

You can watch a high-res version of Level 4's "Sixth Element" aurora video on the company's Vimeo page: http://vimeo.com/79902085

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Miriam Kramer
Staff Writer

Miriam Kramer joined Space.com as a Staff Writer in December 2012. Since then, she has floated in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight, felt the pull of 4-Gs in a trainer aircraft and watched rockets soar into space from Florida and Virginia. She also served as Space.com's lead space entertainment reporter, and enjoys all aspects of space news, astronomy and commercial spaceflight.  Miriam has also presented space stories during live interviews with Fox News and other TV and radio outlets. She originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee where she and her family would take trips to dark spots on the outskirts of town to watch meteor showers every year. She loves to travel and one day hopes to see the northern lights in person. Miriam is currently a space reporter with Axios, writing the Axios Space newsletter. You can follow Miriam on Twitter.