Northern Lights as seen from inside a U2 spy plane

Beautiful shots.<p>Surprised that these photos were allowed to be released from a recent military mission in a spy plane.<p>It&#x27;s hard to glean much insight into what the mission might have been, but I thought the military had to approve the release of content through a lengthy declassification process.

It must be a surreal, spiritual experience to be there all alone at 70,000 feet.

At what altitude is the storm, that generates these lights?<p>Intuitively I would have thought that, if they are on the edge of the atmosphere, the lights would be lower than the plane, no?

I wonder whether they got a big dose of radiation from being so high with all those high energy particles.