Passenger Flying to Alaska Captures Stunning Video of Northern Lights

While flying from Seattle to Fairbanks in Alaska, photographer Moharnab Saikia witnessed a sight he will "never forget."

At about 2:30 a.m. local time, the sky lit up green through the airplane window in a spectacular display of the northern lights.

"I knew about the aurora prediction that week, but also knew that the actual strength can vary a lot in reality as I had tried multiple times in Washington to catch the aurora but failed," Saikia, of Bilati Axomiya photography, told Newsweek.

While the other passengers slept, Saikia kept his eyes on the sky. "I kept looking out the whole way," he said.

After two hours of flying, he saw what he was looking for. "Initially the glow was pretty faint and I just thought it was airglow," he said. "But I decided to take out my camera and take a long exposure photo and saw a faint green color. I was very excited.

"After some time, the aurora was so strong that I could see the waves dancing in green all over the sky. Almost the whole sky was filled at its peak."

Saikia took out his Sony DSLR camera and held it close to his body to stabilize it. "I took multiple photos using my camera's intervalometer for as long as I could before my hand would start going numb," he said. "I then stitched all the images to create a time lapse.

"I was speechless, astonished and anxious too as I knew this was maybe once in a lifetime opportunity for me to experience and photograph it. I called out to my friend sitting beside me as she was asleep so that she could also experience this amazing phenomenon."

The northern lights, also known as the aurora borealis, is an atmospheric phenomenon caused by activity on the surface of the sun.

When solar storms take place on the sun's surface, huge clouds of electrically charged particles are sent out into space, some of which eventually collide with the Earth, the Greenwich Observatory explains. Most of these are deflected by the strong magnetic shield that surrounds our planet, but some end up being captured by the Earth's magnetic field and travel down towards the North and South Poles.

These particles then collide with atoms and molecules in the atmosphere and heat them up, which ultimately causes them to glow. In other words, the aurora occurs when atoms and molecules in our own atmosphere smash into particles from the sun.

Saikia, @moharnab_saikia on Instagram, shared the final footage to his photography Instagram page, @bilatiaxomiya, describing it as "sky-high magic." He also shared the video to the subreddit r/Seattle in a post that has been upvoted over 1,900 times.

"Holy cow!! Thanks for sharing," commented one user.

"This is beyond incredible," said another.

Saikia, who works as a software engineer by day, has always enjoyed taking photos on his phone, but it was during the pandemic that he decided to purchase his first professional camera.

"I started going on hikes and was in love with the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest and decided to get a mirrorless camera," he said. "I started doing Milky Way photography last year and can't get enough of it now.

"I am very excited about getting out and photographing the night sky more."