Wonders in the sky and on the ground await visitors

Standing in a crowd that watched in amazement as bursts of green light danced across the sky, Zhang Yu, 31, was delighted to witness the northern lights, or aurora borealis, during a visit to Ivalo, a village in Finland's Lapland region.

As other tourists with Zhang took photos, one exclaimed, "It's so gorgeous!"

The group was witnessing collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun as they entered Earth's atmosphere near the North Pole.