"At first I couldn’t see much…but then colors started to show, and I pulled out my camera," the passenger said.

Matt Melnyk is an airline pilot and avid aurora chaser who regularly enjoys northern lights shows while cruising at 36,000 feet.

From Earth, auroras — also known as the northern or southern lights according to the hemisphere in which they occur — appear as colorful lights dancing in the sky near the poles. Astronauts on the ...