After several years in the high Arctic I still didn’t have a good picture of the Aurora. Mainly because most of my visits are during the polar day, when it doesn’t get dark at all, but I also had several dark nights where the sky didn’t want to turn green… Last year we tried to find it in Iceland, but we found overcast skies for the full duration of our stay. So this year we had another try, this time in Vesterålen, Norway. After several overcast days and some clear nights with only very faint northern lights, we already thought this try would be in vain as well… However during the last night, we had already packed our bags, there were enough gaps in the clouds to enjoy the most beautiful display of the Aurora borealis. At moments like this the physics behind this phenomenon isn’t important and are the explanations of the native Arctic people (e.g. spirits of the dead racing along the sky) a lot more plausible… At moments like this, you can just watch in awe…