What do Northern Lights look like to the naked eye?
I'm currently on a cruise in Norway and we've been apparently lucky enough to see the Northern Lights. But to my naked eye the Lights were nothing more than a faint cloud and only with a 15 second exposure on a camera could I get something approximating the photos I previously saw online:
Now I'm wondering if the Lights are actually worth seeing during their strongest period in the winter. Can the naked eye capture the beautiful green tones visible in the photos?
Best Answer
In The Northern Lights: Photos vs. Reality:
Aside from being able to make the sky appear green when the naked eye can only see white, long exposure photos mean a lot more movement is captured in one shot than you would see otherwise.
It’s just important to know that the images your eye can see are very different to what your camera can capture.
Pictures about "What do Northern Lights look like to the naked eye?"
What colour are the Northern Lights to the human eye?
Simply put, most auroras are green. That would be the shortest and scientifically correct answer, (there are other colours of the aurora but green is the most commonly observed and relevant colour to this question). However, it doesn't always appear green to our eyes.What do Northern Lights look like in real life?
When you see them in real life, the Northern Lights aren't actually very colorful at all. They often appear milky white in color, "almost like a cloud," as one seasoned traveler puts it.What the Northern Lights look like in person?
[Aurora] only appear to us in shades of gray because the light is too faint to be sensed by our color-detecting cone cells." Thus, the human eye primarily views the Northern Lights in faint colors and shades of gray and white.How can you tell Northern Lights are visible?
The aurora is at its most active around the equinoxes in March and September. The Northern Lights most commonly appear between 17:00 and 02:00. They don't usually exhibit for long \u2013 they may only show for a few minutes, then glide away before returning.What do the northern lights/aurora borealis look like to the naked eye?
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Images: Radu Florin, Skylar Kang, Engin Akyurt, Anna Nekrashevich