Striking images of Iceland’s aurora borealis

The Telegraph has published a handful of spectacular pictures of the northern lights in Iceland by photographer Kristjan Unnar Kristjansson.

“These are some of my most favorite aurora borealis photos I have taken in recent years,” the 31-year-old from the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik told the publication.

“No words can properly describe the experience. Even though I’ve seen them now and again throughout my life, I’m still awe-inspired and flabbergasted every time they show up”

The light displays are caused by the collision of energetic-charged particles with atoms in the high-altitude atmosphere. In northern latitudes the effect is known as the aurora borealis, named after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for the north wind, Boreas.

Florida museum may have Nazi-looted art

Federal officials recently ordered the Mary Brogan Museum of Art & Science in Tallahassee, Fla., not to return one of 50 paintings on loan from a museum in Italy because it is believed to have been stolen by Nazis during World War II.

US authorities are working with the Brogan and the Italian government to resolve questions of ownership amid claims the work had been stolen from a Jewish family in World War II, according to The Associated Press.

The work in question is a 473-year-old painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Girolamo Romano titled Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rogue.

It was part of the 50-piece exhibit, Baroque Painting in Lombardy from Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, which went up March 18 and was disassembled earlier this month.

It is believed that the Nazi-backed French Vichy government seized and sold the painting in question, along with more than 150 other works, in 1941 to pay off debts.