We are a group of amateur astronomers from Sicily on a trip to Alta, Norway, to image the aurora. We have been very lucky.....

On Oct. 4th in Antarctica, "the fight between day and night couldn't suppress the auroras," says Chantal Steyn who sends this picture from Dronning Maudland (Queen Maud Land). Steyn is a member of the South African National Antarctic Expedition, currently "wintering over" at a nunatak named Vesleskarvet. But winter is turning to summer: "This might be our last aurora sighting for the season as daylight starts to take over," she says. "This picture was taken at 1:45 AM and the glow of daylight is already visible on the horizon."

Photo details: Canon IS3, ISO 100, 15 sec.

Before hitting the sack I decided to take a peak outside at the crystal clear evening sky. I could see a faint glow low on the horizon and grabbed my CANON 30D and took this 28 sec exposure with my 50mm f1.8 lens.

The auroras covered the sky. Photos taken on a fisheye lens to fit as much of the sky in.

On Oct. 2nd, for no apparent reason, the sky over Baffin Island, Canada, erupted in green. "I had just come back from walking my dog when the night sky suddenly burst into light," reports Claus Vogel. "The display was dazzling." He grabbed his Nikon D200 and snapped this photo.

Researchers call this kind of outburst an "auroral substorm." First recognized in the early 1960s by a young Japanese physicist named Shun-ichi Akasofu, auroral substorms have been studied for almost 50 years, yet to this day they are neither predictable nor fully understood.

Photo details: Nikon D200, 200 ASA