Marc Lester / The Anchorage Daily News via AP

An aurora borealis swirls in the sky over the Yukon River village of Ruby, Alaska, a checkpoint of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on March 9.

Oscar Avellaneda-Cruz / Reuters

The aurora borealis is seen from Mile 7 on Beam Road above snow-covered tundras near Nome, Alaska, March 10. A solar storm that shook the Earth's magnetic field on Thursday spared satellite and power systems as it delivered a glancing blow, although it could still intensify until early Friday, U.S. space weather experts said.

 Related content: More aurora borealis on PhotoBlog

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Terje Sorgjerd

After staying up all night for a week, Norwegian photographer Terje Sorgjerd captured the aurora borealis in a way few have ever seen before.

He endured forbiddingly frigid temperatures of -15 degrees Fahrenheit while shooting 22,000 pictures of the skies near Kirkenes and Pas National Park in Norway, near the Russian border. A testament to his patience and passion, he referred to the expedition as "good fun." The results are stunning.

Terje Sorgjerd

For years Sorgjerd planned, waiting for precisely the right conditions, then packed 90 pounds of gear and headed into the wilderness. Using a motion control dolly in conjunction with professional SLR lenses, he created the time lapse video from 1.3 terabytes of pictures.

Terje Sorgjerd

The Aurora Borealis is caused by radiation from the sun, or "solar wind," interacting with Earth's magnetic field. According to Lorne McKee, a space weather forecaster for Natural Resources Canada, more solar storms are expected, since the sun recently moved from a quiet period in its 11-year solar cycle to a more active phase.

Check out excerpts of his video in our interview with Sorgjerd talking about his work.

The original video can be seen on Vimeo here.