Here's a photo of last night's northern lights display — made especially beautiful by the huge solar flare that hit last night — taken by Jónína Óskarsdóttir. Daaaaaaaaamn. Right? Click to enlarge. Really. [Spaceweather.com]

Here's the best space video we've ever seen: 18 time-lapse sequences of photos taken from the International Space Station, gorgeously processed and edited by Michael König. There's so much going on it's hard to know where to focus while you watch—the North and Southern Lights? The flickers of lightning in the clouds? The cobwebs of settlement light stretching across continents? A list of the locations being passed over can be found here; the first two sequences were taken above the United States. We published a similar video a few months ago, but this one's the real deal. [via Kottke]

[The aurora australis, or "southern lights," as seen from the International Space Station. Discover Magazine's Bad Astronomer says it's caused by subatomic particles interacting with earth's magnetic field, which is almost as cool as our explanation, "Space Elves." Pic via]