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A question on Northern lights?


nightfisher

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Right so we see images of the northern lights usually in a hazy green colour, but if viewed by eye would it still have the same colour or would it be more grey smudge/streak , similar to viewing a Nebulae through an eyepiece ?  

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1 hour ago, nightfisher said:

Right so we see images of the northern lights usually in a hazy green colour, but if viewed by eye would it still have the same colour or would it be more grey smudge/streak , similar to viewing a Nebulae through an eyepiece ?  

It depends on the strength of the lights - I've seen them as little more than a grey smudge, but I've also seen them as vivid green displays dancing across the sky!

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Typically they are quite weak with maybe a little bit of green. The massive flare back in February really did look like many images with vibrant green everywhere in the sky, but that one also had a rare red component which made the sky look like it was literally on fire. But that was more of an exception than a rule, naked eye red aurora is quite rare even at 60N where i live. The light show week ago apparently was similar, but i was in a cloudy spot then so couldn't tell.

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A very good question....do the northern lights look anything like this to the unaided naked eye even under the most spectacular conditions (as advertised by Icelandic cruises)?

alaska-northern-lights.jpg

 

Considering this is how Andromeda is portrayed:

Andromeda_Galaxy_560mm_FL.jpg

But we all know what the Andromeda galaxy looks like to the naked eye.

 

I haven't witnessed northern lights myself*....so I can't comment but I am surprised at how few comparisons are made between photos and how the show looked to the naked eye on a particular night (there's one or two on Google search).

 

I can comment on noctilucent clouds and the photos and the naked eye visualisation can be quite similar with the naked eye being a bit more faint but still very impressive and easily seen with the mk1 eyeball during a spectacular show.

 

*I think I once did witness a faint showing of the NL but I didn't even take photos as I wasn't even really aware of them, just thought it was thin cloud. Someone I knew staying about 3 miles away from where I was staying took some fairly impressive looking NL images that night.....🤷‍♂️

 

Thanks to the impressive photos above which I would never claim to be my own.

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I have seen the aurora in both Norfolk and Iceland and neither time did I see colour to my naked eye, just appeared white.  Yes with a camera they appeared green.

Hope this answers your question.

Carole 

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I am not an eye specialist, but this is my understanding. We sometimes or tend to forget that the human eye is not very sensitive or receptive to distinguishing colour at night or other dark environments.

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26 minutes ago, carastro said:

I have seen the aurora in both Norfolk and Iceland and neither time did I see colour to my naked eye, just appeared white.  Yes with a camera they appeared green.

Hope this answers your question.

Carole 

Similar to Carole. I have seen the aurora in Orkney - I actually thought I was looking at car headlights far away across the landscape as there was no colour - until someone pointed out that that was the aurora 😂😂

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I traveled to Alta inside the arctic circle in 2012 and the display was not that powerful but the green colour was very vivid.

Conversely, I was at AstroCamp last weekend in South Wales and we had a massive display but it was mostly colourless with a slight green hue at the peak, but the colour was incredible even in handheld snaps on my iPhone. See below.

3A110B36-2DC8-4E08-B313-C08C6FD062D6.thumb.jpeg.66de097bae24531143b5a1986f73d16a.jpeg

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3 hours ago, StuartJPP said:

A very good question....do the northern lights look anything like this to the unaided naked eye even under the most spectacular conditions (as advertised by Icelandic cruises)?

 

 

That image of the northern lights has been heavily processed to get both the lights and the mountains looking like that. Here are two 'out of the camera' images that give an idea of the difference in lights intensity.

Both images have been taken with the same camera and lens , but on different nights (and locations - although both in Iceland). The brighter of the two is actually a shorter exposure - 2.5 seconds and the lights appeared more or less like that to the naked eye - this was 2015 and one of the best displays I have seen - it went on most of the night.

The second image is a slightly greenish fuzz, and was a 6 second exposure. You could barely discern this as the lights and to the naked eye was a greyish fuzz - distinguishable as lights only by the fact it was moving differently to the clouds - it took a photo to confirm there was something there.

 

 

lights001.JPG

lights002.JPG

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I was in Iceland recently and I saw the aurora one night from the edge of a city and they appeared washed out green but occasionally greenish when there was a strong display. A few nights later I was on a remote part bortle 2 and the greens and reds were vivid.

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I've seen two aurora displays, both from my back yard. Both some time ago,

The first was a huge storm, back in the 90's. It started out faint green but culminated in a vivid red band overhead.

The second display a few years later was less dramatic. I don't recall much colour.

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12 hours ago, Philip R said:

I am not an eye specialist, but this is my understanding. We sometimes or tend to forget that the human eye is not very sensitive or receptive to distinguishing colour at night or other dark environments.

It's more about the brightness of the phenomena than the environment/conditions at the time, but as you suggested, below a certain threshold of brightness our eyes are not sensitive to colour.

The same principals apply to all kinds of phenomena. For example, very dim meteors have no colour when observed visually, but brighter meteors can often be colourful, especially fireballs.

Another example is the trains that brighter meteors leave behind them, which much like auroras, are (mostly) due to atmospheric gasses being ionized and emitting light of very specific wavelengths. The short lived trains of fast meteors are green, due to the oxygen emission @ 557.7nm, but I usually don't see much colour unless the meteor/train is fairly bright. Here's one example of a bright Perseid my camera caught a couple of years back with a bright short lived train - the camera often records colour when there is none visible to my own eyes.

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For the recent strong display, last Sunday, I was ready and waiting outside once it had got dark and when my eyes had adapted was seeing very little, and about to give up, when the northern sky erupted into bright shimmering quite high-contrast vertical curtains of grey. I involuntarily swore out loud. Occasionally there were distinct hints of green. And this was from the very south of Ireland, my first ever view of the phenomenon. Being half Finnish, West Cork was not the place I expected to see it first. I grabbed my camera and took some 3-4 second exposures. The contrast to the naked eye seemed higher than in the pictures, but in grey.

Magnus

_MG_0463_Aurora_Brighter.thumb.jpeg.8fec9ad95a07e64a74df8b92199b2aea.jpeg

Edited by Captain Scarlet
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The three aurorae I've imaged from Cornwall this year have not been bright enough to see in colour, though I apparently missed the most active phases of the latest one.

However, I saw 5 bright displays here during the solar cycle that peaked around the turn of the century. I had younger eyes, then, admittedly, but they were visibly in colour - mostly red, purple and pink columns, plus sometimes green bands.

I live in hope that the current solar cycle delivers such a display!

Regards, Mike.

Edited by mcrowle
for clarity
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For most auroras at northerly UK locations, a display is just white/grey to the naked eye. On occasions when the aurora is very intense red colour can be seen. Which I have seen from Orkney and from Gloucestershire.

Cameras do pick up the colour well, but the apparent intensity depends on the processing done. I try to minimise the processing to achieve a more restrained presentation.

We had a very bright aurora on Orkney on March 23, and I also took some real-time video - though it still shows some green / red tinges it is a pretty good representation of what the naked eye sees.

I made a video of the display at:

 

 

/callump

 

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Depends wholly on the strength of the display at the time but yes colour can be seen with the naked eye.  Certainly on the occasions that I have viewed from Fife and Morayshire I've always found that detecting movement in the aurora is harder than colour; green in particular is prominent. 

Jim 

Edited by saac
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As part of my Army training, it was my duty to witness the Aurora up in the Arctic circle, that was something not to be missed! The colours of green was vivid and right across the sky. War stopped, we drank Tartan export and carried on.

chaz

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2 hours ago, LukeSkywatcher said:

If and when I get to see them (next year for my 50th), I certainly won't have my eye stuck behind a camera. 

It's Lorna's 50 birthday gift to me.

You don't need to - just set the camera up on a tripod and leave it clicking away while you enjoy the view. You wouldn't be taking handheld photos and with the tripod, you can get yourself with the lights in the background as a bit of a memento photo!

Edited by Shimrod
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20 minutes ago, Shimrod said:

You don't need to - just set the camera up on a tripod and leave it clicking away while you enjoy the view. You wouldn't be taking handheld photos and with the tripod, you can get yourself with the lights in the background as a bit of a memento photo!

I'm still planning/debating going to USA next April for the total solar eclipse.

 

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1 hour ago, LukeSkywatcher said:

If and when I get to see them (next year for my 50th), I certainly won't have my eye stuck behind a camera. 

It's Lorna's 50 birthday gift to me.

Way to go.

I've seen 2 total solar eclipses, both with just my eyes and eclipse glasses (outside of totality).

We travelled to Turkey for our second eclipse. Right on the center line. I booked 12 months in advance, having done much homework.

We walked down to the beach for totally, where we saw the Sky & Telescope eclipse  expedition set up on the beach. Loads of fancy kit and cameras. All poised for those few minutes of immersion in the Moon's shadow. Anoraks and wooley hays abound.

Me, bare feet on the sand in my Speedos, seeing it, feeling it.

Some things have to be experienced, rather than recorded.

 

 

 

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