Pilot Captures Mesmerizing Phenomenon in 'Lucky' Encounter

A pilot based in Portugal was treated to a spectacular northern lights display on a rare flight over central Canada.

João Mendes is a 58-year-old pilot who has been flying for TAP Air Portugal since 1999. He was met by the captivating northern lights view while operating a flight from San Francisco to Lisbon, the Portuguese capital where he is based, on the evening of September 16.

Mendes captured the mesmerizing display in a timelapse video, shared on October 17 on his YouTube channel @BestAirplaneSeat. It was created using nearly 2,000 still photos taken of the scene, Mendes told Newsweek.

"The aurora [northern lights] show lasted about two hours and we had just entered Canada. The big city lights that cross on the left, when the northern lights start, is Winnipeg [the capital of the Canadian province of Manitoba]," Mendes added.

How Can I See the Northern Lights?

The northern lights, also known as the aurora borealis, are formed from electrons colliding with the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere.

The U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says that, in these collisions, "the electrons transfer their energy to the atmosphere thus exciting the atoms and molecules to higher energy states. When they relax back down to lower energy states, they release their energy in the form of light. This is similar to how a neon light works."

The northern lights can often be viewed "somewhere on Earth" from just after sunset or just before sunrise. They can't be seen during daylight hours, the center adds.

The U.S. National Park Service says: "Your chance of seeing the northern lights is impacted by the type of radiation produced by the sun, your location on the Earth, and whether night sky is both clear and dark. Chances increase slightly during the winter because there are more hours of darkness."

The aurora borealis typically form from about 80 to 500 kilometers (50 to 310 miles) above the Earth's surface but can also be viewed from as much as 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) away "when the aurora is bright and if conditions are right," says the NOAA.

The Space Weather Prediction Center says Earth's magnetic field "guides the electrons such that the aurora forms two ovals approximately centered at the magnetic poles. During major geomagnetic storms, these ovals expand away from the poles such that aurora can be seen over most of the United States.

"When space weather activity increases and more frequent and larger storms and substorms occur, the aurora extends equatorward. During large events, the aurora can be observed as far south as the U.S., Europe, and Asia," the center adds.

A 'Lucky' Encounter

Mendes, who spent 15 years in the Portuguese Air Force from 1984 before flying for TAP Air Portugal, said that, during the evening of this flight, "we reached 52 degrees north of latitude to benefit from prevailing tailwinds."

The latest aurora viewing was his first northern lights encounter, "but that obviously has to do with the routes we fly on TAP Air Portugal," he said, adding that it's "very rare to fly northern routes."

The pilot's latest timelapse video was created from still photos. "That's why the image quality is so good," Mendes said, adding that "this one took about 1,900 photos" to create.

The footage shows a star-filled dark night sky overlooking a glow of scattered lights below. A tiny dot at the bottom right of the screen is later indicated to be Jupiter, according to a note overlaid on the clip.

Shortly after, a patch of bright green appears to rise up from the bottom-left frame of the screen. The burning aurora glow continues to expand across the sky as the clip ends.

"I developed the habit of catching timelapses from night flights and I [was] just lucky that the Northern Lights showed up when I was already capturing photos," Mendes said.

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