Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

In Search of the Northern Lights

In certain parts of the world's northern latitudes, nature offers up its own laser light show: the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights.

The lights are created when a solar wind of charged particles enters the earth's magnetic field in the upper atmosphere. The resulting visual displays can be beautiful and dramatic, but they are often hard to track down in the northern night sky.

NPR's Susan Stone went on a hunt for the Northern Lights in Iceland. Her guide was storyteller and tour company operator Magnus Gudmundsson, who has spent more than 50 years watching the phenomenon occur in his native country.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Susan Stone
Susan Stone is a contributing reporter/producer for NPR based in Berlin, Germany. Before relocating to Germany for a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellowship in 2005, she was a producer, editor, reporter and director at NPR’s headquarters in Washington for 10 years. Most recently, Stone was a producer and director for the weekend editions of NPR's award-winning news magazine All Things Considered, where she created a signature monthly music feature for the show.