What were you doing last Friday evening, on the 21st of February 2014? Relaxing with a film and getting ready to party all weekend - I hear you say; well I would argue that no special effects or sparkly dress can compete with my Friday evening. Confused? What could possibly outdo sequins? Two words: Northern Lights.

Also known as Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights is a natural wonder and I was lucky enough to experience it through a school trip. Thanks to the outstanding organisational skills and hard work of a group of teachers at my school; a whole party of teachers and students (from both my school and a neighbouring school) travelled in search of the Northern Lights.

Swiftly, after a hour talk from various different astronomers about the formation of an Aurora and why our chances of seeing a display in the sky was not guaranteed; the whole group went through the usual airport security and promptly boarded the plane (notice how we did not go shopping in the duty free area - yes it was heart-breaking). After sitting comfortably in the aircraft, screaming wildly during take-off whilst pretending that we were in a rocket ship and consuming the refreshments in what felt like record-breaking time; we finally arrived over the Shetland Islands.

Here, we circled the aircraft in the night sky in order to find the Northern Lights. This would have been amazing in itself, but we got to do something even better…we took on the journey of finding the Northern Lights with very few lights turned on in our aircraft. This meant that we were in complete darkness which maximised our vision of the night sky. Obviously the pilot and other professionals knew what they were doing, or else I would not be here today writing this article but it was still an unforgettable experience.

After a few too many misjudgements such as “Oh look it’s a shooting star; oh no, it’s an oil rig” and “we’re in outer space”, we finally spotted the green glow of the Aurora. As a teenager myself, there are very few things that I know off other than chocolate which can silence exited people of my age. However, just the sight of an outstandingly prodigious and phenomenal green band of light made the plane silent enough to hear a pin drop. It was remarkable.

Other than the Aurora, we also viewed numerous star constellations such as Orion, through our plane window. Although the views were amazing and I learnt a lot of astronomy on my school trip, there was one thing which I found extremely challenging. This was the task of swapping seats with the people sitting next to me frequently (in pitch black darkness - yes, darkness) in order to take turns sitting next to the window. Hopefully this is not a skill that I need to acquire for the future.

My school trip in search of the Northern Lights (a school trip like no other) was both inspirational and wonderful. In fact, it was a dream come true