The human eyes can’t see vivid colors of the Northern Lights like the camera

I am going to be honest – I was a little disappointed when I was actually at the scene of the Northern Lights at Abisko Sky Station. Now – I do not mean that they did not appear, they did & they were so much of them. I see waves after waves & sometimes curtains after curtains. The thing is – our human eye has the limitation of viewing the vivid colours like what our DSLR camera can.

And the funniest thing is – I have never read anyone mentioned this in ANY of the many blogs or articles I read during the research of Northern Lights hunting.

So this is what I illustrated on my facebook post when I was there:-

1st pic: the aurora with a phone camera.
2nd pic: the aurora with a phone camera with a northern light photo app
3rd pic: the aurora taken by a professional photographer
To clear any misconception on what the human eye see when they are out in the sky. It’s not the vivid green color that you see from the camera pics. It’s much lighter and grey-er. Sometimes they look like clouds but wavy with a slight tinge of green.

 

As you can see, I was not able to ‘capture’ in picture what I actually see from my naked eyes, but then when I google with “why can’t we see vivid green nothern lights with our eyes”, I finally got to this article – How cameras reveal the true color of northern lights.  Not directly related  from what I google but it is giving me the answer to my question.

And this is what the writer shared (picture from our eyes & picture from the camera)

Images of auroras captured by photographer Mike Taylor show that what the eye sees (top) lack the color and vibrancy of the true colors revealed by a camera (below).
Credit: Image copyright Mike Taylor – Taylor Photography

 

And the answer to why we can’t see the lights as vivid as the camera (as posted in the link above)  is:

On the website Astropix, Jerry Lodriguss describes it this way: “Humans use two different kinds of cells in their eyes to sense light. Cone cells, concentrated in the fovea in the central area of vision, are high resolution and detect color in bright light. These are the main cells we use for vision in the daytime. Rod cells, concentrated in the periphery around the outside of the fovea, can detect much fainter light at night, but only see in black and white and shades of gray. [Aurora] only appear to us in shades of gray because the light is too faint to be sensed by our color-detecting cone cells.”

So there! While I am not saying I regret going that far up north just to see these ‘greyish green’ lights, I just want to set the record straight for anyone else whom are planning to go see the lights.

The essentials – if you want to take a picture of the lights in action

1. A good sturdy tripod! (mine broke-plastic connecting parts due to the cold after a just 2 nights of use)
2. A DSLR (my 8 year old Canon 450D was able to do the job if you get the right settings)  OR  if you are using your iPhone with app “northern light photo taker” (No android based app found for this – as of Apr16’16)
3. Endurance to withstand the cold while waiting (at least a good 1 – 2 hours in the cold of the night of at least -12C)  OR just get a remote to take the picture (ie if you have already set up the position of the camera – which is subjective because the lights move to different parts of the skies)
4. Wear 2 gloves, the thick one to protect from the cold plus the wind & a thinner one so that you can ‘press’ the camera button to take the picture as the thick gloves hinders your fingers mobility to press on the tiny button  (if you use a smart phone, a touchscreen able winter gloves) IF you are not using a remote (see#3)

That being said, if I have a chance to be somewhere where Northern Lights are visible, I would still want to go out & endure the cold just to catch them in action with my eyes. The feeling is indescribable.