I’ve seen auroras on red-eyes between the U.S. and Europe before. This one over Lake Superior, for example, on a July night in 2007. And this one over Greenland in September 2012. But both of those were fairly dim. Sunday night’s red-eye was different. This one was a real show. And I almost missed it.

First, my window seat had no window. It was 33A on a United 777: an exit row, with lots of legroom, but a wall where other seats have a window. But I got a corner of the window behind me if I leaned back. The girl sitting there shut the window to block out the sun earlier in the flight, but now it was dark, so I opened the window and saw this: a green curtain of light over the wing. So I got my camera, and wedged it into the narrow space at the top right corner of the window, where I could get a clean shot. And then I shot away.

All the times on the shots are Pacific US time, but the local time here — looking north across Hudson Bay, from northern Quebec — were Eastern, or flanking midnight.

None of the shots in the set have been processed in any way. Later, when I have time, I’ll add a few more, and edit them to bring out what the naked eye saw: the best reason to have a window seat on the polar side of a red-eye flight.