The Arctic summer is about 8 weeks long, it starts in June and ends in August or September. The Arctic is sometimes known as the land of the midnight sun because of the almost continous sunlight.

There are many diffrent spectacular effects the sun causes in both summer and winter.

There are mirages called fata morgana. The sunlight reflects off the sea ice and as it goes back up throught the layers of warm air the rays of light are bent. The rays of light look so much like a far off mountain range that many explorers have marked mountains on their maps where there are none.

When there are ice crystals in the air they bend the light and cause spectacular effects such as 'sun dogs' or 'mock suns' these are bright spots on either side of the sun. Different shaped ice crystals cause different effects one other effect is a halo around the sun or moon.

The aurora borealis or northern lights can only be seen in winter in the Arctic reogions. The aurora borealis loks like curtains of coloured light white, green, blue, and purple.