A stunning rare showing of the Northern Lights has been captured in a timelapse video. Dan Monk, 31, captured the video while he was working in Kielder Forest, Northumberland, on Sunday evening. It is rare to see the lights, which are also known as aurora borealis, in the UK and Dan has only seen them a 'handful of times' in the last year. They are commonly more known for being seen in Iceland and Norway, but you can also see them in Sweden, Finland, Russia, Canada and Alaska. It happens because when electron's reach the Earth's upper atmosphere, they collide with nitrogen and oxygen molecules, sending them into an 'excited' state. These electrons eventually calm down and release light, which is what we see as the northern lights. Dan, who is director of astrophotography at Kielder Observatory, described it as 'amazing.' He said: "It was amazing really, it was one of the best displays I've seen for a while in Northumberland. "We do get them fairly often but they aren't that visible to the naked eye and they are normally better on a camera. "Last night, they were easily visible to the eye and you could see them moving as well in real time so that was quite impressive. "With the human eye, it's not as obvious and it usually looks like a grey or white colour, but you could just about see a very pale green to the naked eye. "It was just stunning, it was lovely." Dan added: "We had an event on last night at the observatory, and it was funny because I was running an aurora night, so it's all about the northern lights. "I did a talk about the northern lights with the public, and then when we went outside afterwards it appeared so it was a bit of a perfect night really. "So I was running around with the camera trying to caption the moment while people were watching it. "I didn't get much chance to look at it myself because I was so busy trying to get the camera set up frantically."
