{"id":902945,"date":"2026-09-23T21:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T21:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/902945\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T21:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T21:12:14","slug":"aurora-season-is-back-pilot-captures-spectacular-northern-lights-from-37000-ft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/902945\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora season is back! Pilot captures spectacular northern lights from 37,000 ft"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aurora season is well underway, folks, and pilot Matt Melnyk<\/a> arguably has one of the best seats in the house.<\/p>\n

Cruising at 37,000 feet (11 kilometers) during a Boeing 787 Dreamliner flight from Calgary, Canada, to London, U.K., Melnyk was treated to a spectacular view of the northern lights<\/a> dancing below a star-studded sky.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“It’s nice to finally see them again”, Melnyk told Space.com in an email. The show lasted about three hours as Melnyk flew over northern Manitoba and Hudson Bay on Sept. 22.<\/p>\n

And this wasn’t his first show of the season. Melnyk also photographed the northern lights during a similar flight on Sept. 14 when the display erupted over Manitoba and Hudson Bay once again.<\/p>\n

Image 1 of 3<\/p>\n

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Best seat in the house at 37,000 ft on Sept. 22.<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Matt Melnyk<\/a>)<\/p>\n

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The aurora show on Sept. 22 lasted around 3 hours.<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Matt Melnyk<\/a>)<\/p>\n

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Long sweeping arcs filled the sky on Sept 22.<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Matt Melnyk<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The dazzling shows herald the start of what could be a very promising northern lights season. The sun<\/a> has passed the peak of solar maximum and is in the declining \u2014 and often turbulent \u2014 phase of its approximately 11-year solar cycle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

The combination can make the years following solar maximum<\/a> particularly fruitful for aurora chasers. Solar physicist P\u00e5l Brekke previously told<\/a> Space.com that peak auroral activity tends to occur a few years after solar maximum.<\/p>\n

For the techies<\/p>\n

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\"Canon\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Canon)<\/p>\n

Melnyk captured the northern lights imagery with a Canon EOS R6 Mark II<\/a> paired with a Canon RF 14mm F1.4 L VCM lens.<\/p>\n

And there’s another reason September can be a good month for aurora hunters. Around the spring and autumn equinoxes, geomagnetic activity tends to increase thanks in part to the Russell-McPherron effect. Due to the geometry of Earth’s magnetic field<\/a> relative to the sun, conditions become more favorable for the solar wind<\/a>‘s magnetic field to connect with Earth’s, allowing energy to funnel more efficiently down to the poles.<\/p>\n

\"Space\"<\/p>\n

With darker nights returning, a turbulent sun and a little help from the equinox, aurora season is certainly off to a promising start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aurora season is well underway, folks, and pilot Matt Melnyk arguably has one of the best seats in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":902946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":["post-902945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}