Northern Lights, known as The Golden Compass in North America, is a young-adult fantasy novel by Philip Pullman, published by Scholastic UK in 1995. Set in a universe parallel to ours, it features the journey of Lyra Belacqua to the Arctic in search of her missing friend, Roger Parslow, and her imprisoned uncle, Lord Asriel, who has been conducting experiments with a mysterious substance known as "Dust".

Northern Lights is the first book of a trilogy, His Dark Materials (1995 to 2000).Alfred A. Knopf published the first US edition April 1996, entitled The Golden Compass.Under that title it has been adapted as a 2007 feature film by Hollywood and as a companion video game.