Last week, I witnessed one of the most amazing shows of Northern Lights I’ve ever seen. An intense show that lasted almost 7,5 hours, all the way from the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Northwest Territories and Yukon to the Far-Northern shores of Alaska, all the way over the Arctic Ocean towards North-East Siberia and further into Russia.
The intensity and coverage varied every so many seconds and was just pure magic. A few moments of a bright green haze all around us, would turn into a violent show of rapidly moving curtains of light that move so fast and furious that words cannot describe the show that felt as if it was just outside our very windows. Even the ground below us was illuminated in a green/turquoise hue, nicely reflecting in the white ice, snow and clouds below.
A few times I wished I could just reach out and brush the soft but rapidly moving lights around us. Of course, perception is everything here. The lights probably started up to 80km (50 miles) above our altitude, reaching up to 1000km (650 miles) and higher into space.
The extreme size and proportions of the Aurora over the featureless clouds and ice-covered oceans below deprives a human eye and senses of every proportion and distance.
The show gave us goose bumps, and left us speechless on quite a few occasions.
If only words could describe the intensity of energy and rapidly moving beauty that surrounded us for such a long time over those desolate and cold landscapes.
No other aircraft for hundreds of miles around us and a layer of clouds over the ground denied this unique show for any spectator on the ground.
Were we the sole witnesses to an utterly pointless but beautiful natural phenomenon over our heads that was reserved only to us?
It almost makes one question the very purpose of life... are we just witnesses to a grand but completely pointless show of mathematics and physics around us, where emotions and perception are just a by-product of our biological bodies, or is there perhaps a purpose to this very show of aurora and life. Perhaps the why of all of this?
I am cynical and critical by nature, but seeing such a profoundly majestic show of nature, that seemed to be only reserved for the two of us in the cockpit, I cannot help but let my thoughts wander for a few moments.
Regardless of any of this above; a spectacle like this stays with me for a lifetime and I can only hope that my images convey at least partially the joy I felt when taking them and seeing this with my own eyes.