Polar ultraviolet imager (UVI) and an all-sky camera at Longyearbyen contemporaneously detected an auroral vortex structure (so-called “auroral spiral”). Particularly, from space, the auroral spiral was observed as a “small spot” in the poleward region of the main auroral oval near midnight, which was formed while the substorm-associated auroral bulge was subsiding and several poleward-elongated auroral streak-like structures appeared during the late substorm recovery phase. To pursue the spiral source region in the magnetotail, we trace each UVI image along field lines to the magnetic equatorial plane of the nightside magnetosphere using an empirical magnetic field model. Interestingly, the magnetotail region corresponding to the auroral spiral covered a broad region from X_gsm ~ -40 to -70 _E at Y_gsm ~ 8 to 12 R_E. The appearance of this auroral spiral may suggest that extensive areas of the magnetotail remain active even during the late substorm recovery phase.