We’d been in the air about 2½ hours when the pilot came over the intercom to report the first hints of a glow, dead ahead to the south.

It took a little longer before anything other than a starry night sky and a deep black Southern Ocean was visible to the passengers, even through the relatively large cabin windows of the Qantas 787-9 Dreamliner chartered for this journey in search of the world’s biggest light show, the Aurora Australis.