The northern lights are an awesome natural phenomenon and most visible from October to April. You needn’t go to the Nordic countries close to the Aretic Circle. Here are places that offer you this spectacular night show as well.

Iceland provides some of the best opportunities to witness the northern lights. They are typically visible from September to April, coinciding (同时发生) with dark, clear nights, though there is a chance that you may spot them in early spring. The peak viewing season, however, is from November to early March, when the nights are the longest.

This remote area of Canada has many spots to view the northern lights shining in the night sky. One of the best places to view the lights and learn about how the northern light s came into being as well as the folk stories about this gift from Mother Nature, is the Northern Lights Space and Science Center in Watson Lake.

The city lies directly beneath a band of northern light s activity so it is a perfect spot to view the phenomenon. The shining lights are most frequently seen between 11 pm and 2 am, so don’t forget to set your alarm clock. You can enjoy a stay in a hot springs resort (度假胜地) and enjoy the show while taking a relaxing bath.

Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland is the home of Santa, making it a great place to take a family vacation. There are plenty of daytime activities including sledding (滑雪橇), ice fishing, and learning about the unique culture of Rovaniemi. Santa Claus Village in Lapland is a popular place to cross the Aretic Circle: here the line is marked, and you can even get a certificate confirming the achievement.

The Music Educator Award, presented by the Recording Academy and Grammy Museum, recognizes those who have made a significant contribution to music education. This year it went to Annie Ray, a teacher at Annandale High School in Fairfax County, Virginia. She was honored for her efforts to make music accessible to all students, particularly those with disabilities.

Ray attended the awards ceremony in Los Angeles, took photos with pop stars and brought home a $10,000 prize and matching grant (补助金) for her school’s music program. But she considers the award to be her students.

Ray loved music and was regarded as a music talent at an early age. She was inspired by the diversity of the Annandale community, which she says represents over 60 countries. There are a lot of cultures that might typically clash (冲突), but they come together in this very beautiful harmony. So she created the Crescendo Orchestra (管弦乐队) for students with disabilities, as well as a parent orchestra that teaches nearly 200 caregivers a year to play the same instrument as their child.

The orchestra is about much more than just making music, however. It gives students a chance to develop their cooperation skills and learn the art of improving something. “I really push my students to be bold, go out of their comfort zones, challenge themselves and become confident,” Ray said. “Meanwhile, they completely changed my educational approaches. I learn to teach them according to their own abilities and pace.”

At the Grammys, what impressed her was that many famous performers agreed that a good music educator can change one’s life, which made her feel what she did was rewarding.

But she faces some challenges. One is that not many people understand how much music educators’ work matters. Another challenge is resources. Her school desperately needs new instruments but lacks enough money.

“It is a hard profession, but I never give up. There’s nothing else like it,” Ray said.

The first commercial airliner to cross the Atlantic on a purely high-fat, low-emissions fuel flew Tuesday from London to New York in a step toward achieving what supporters called “jet zero”.

The Virgin Atlantic Boeing 787 flight was powered without using fossil fuels, relying on so-called sustainable aviation (航空) fuel made up largely of tallow (动物油脂) and other waste fats and plant sugars. “The world will always assume something can’t be done, until you do it.” said Virgin founder Richard Branson, who was aboard the flight with government officials, engineers and journalists.

The UK Transport Department, which provided 1 million pounds to plan and operate the flight, called the test a “huge step towards j et zero” to make air travel more environmentally friendly, though large challenges remain in making the fuel widely available.

Sustainable aviation fuel, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions by about 70%, is the best near-term way for the international aviation industry to achieve its net zero target by 2050, the US Energy Department said.

Holly Boyd-Boland, president of corporate development at Virgin Atlantic, said the flight shows the fuel can power existing aircraft but said the challenge is enlarging production to get to enough volume so that they are using more sustainable aviation fuel every day.

While this is the first jetliner to make the trans-Atlantic journey using only the sustainable fuel, it is not a commercial flight and not the first jet to do so. Gulfstream Aerospace was the first to make the crossing earlier this month with a business jet powered only by the eco-fuel. Air France-KLM flew from Paris to Montreal two years ago using a mix of petroleum-based jet fuel and a synthetic (合成物) made from waste cooking oils.

“This flight somehow gets us closer to guilt-free flying. Sustainable aviation fuel represents around 0.1% of aviation fuel globally and will be very hard to expand sustainably, but the flight is a valuable try,” said policy director Cait Hewitt.

Baleen whales (须鲸) play a vital role in marine ecosystems. To communicate across vast distances and find each other, baleen whales depend mainly on the production of sounds that travels far in dark oceans. However, since whale songs were first discovered more than 50 years ago, it remained unknown how baleen whales produce their complex sounds — until now.

A new study led by voice scientist Coen Elemans reported that baleen whales evolved unique structures in their throat that enable their low-frequency sounds, but also limit their communication range.

To understand how muscle activity could change the calls, the researchers built a model of the entire whale throat. As a result, the researchers found baleen whales have a U-shaped tissue in their throat that allows them to breathe in huge amounts of air. They also have a unique fatty cushion (垫子)that isn’t found in other animals. When the whales push air from their lungs past the fatty cushion, it starts to produce very low-frequency underwater sounds. What’s more, the throat evolution of baleen whales lets them sing underwater without the risk of choking and drowning.

However, the researchers found while baleen whales are able to make a wide range of different sounds, they can’t produce sounds louder than noise from shipping lanes (航道), drilling activity and so on, which limits their communication range. Since baleen whales can’t sing loud enough to gloss over the noise from ships, they can’t hear each other properly, which means some can’t mate. Being unable to find a mate would in turn threaten their future population numbers.

“Regrettably, the frequency range and maximum communication depth of 100 meters we predict, overlaps completely with the dominant frequency range and depth of human-made noise caused by shipping traffic. Now we show despite baleen whales’ amazing physiology, they can’t escape the noise humans make in the oceans. We need strict regulations for such noise, because these whales are dependent on sound for communication,” Elemans said.