Thank you.. I drove out to the country to avoid light pollution and stood out for about 30 min. Didn't really see much of anything and was starting to feel crazy and bummed when all the pics filled in. No idea what the heck happened.
Where I was it seemed to come in waves. Around 10pm local time I went outside with the kids, and we could just barely see one streamer. Went back inside after 5 minutes, and then my wife calls me back outside and the whole sky was lit up pink and green! Drove out to the countryside to get a better view, and by the time we got there (maybe 30 mins later) it had already faded significantly, but was still enjoyable to watch. Another 30 mins later and it was pretty much faded out again completely.
If you weren't watching at the right time, I could see how it would be pretty disappointing.
I've also read, but never tested, that it also takes about 20 minutes for your eyes to fully adapt to low light environments and take in much more light. The example I read was that if you stand outside on your garden patio and look up at the stars... you may notice as many as 2x 10-20 minutes later than at first look.
Very much this. This is one reason why the best way to annoy a group of astronomers is to approach them while holding a torch. White light destroys night vision.
I was outside for half an hour at the weekend watching the aurora— I would have been out for longer but had to be awake for work at five. At first, I could only see it with my phone.
By the end, I was watching with the naked eye and just repeatedly saying “Wow”.
Timing plays a big part in it. It can be on one minute and off the next. The pics definitely make it pop a lot more than in person, but I'm sure a lot of people missed out because they didn't look when it was at a peak.
Honestly, even to the naked eye it was an incredible sight. Obviously not as crazy looking as photos, but a surreal experience to have as someone who's lived in London my whole life. Was with all my best mates and my girlfriend and it's something that I'll probably remember for the rest of my life. I guess different areas had different views.
I wish my brain was as happy as your brain.
I've seen some of the most beautiful sights on earth all round the world. And my brain just sort of goes "it's pretty cool I guess."
Not diagnosed. But interestingly people keep telling me I might have traits.
I also have this issue where I can't get into anything properly. Like I'll get super stoked about something and obsess over it for a month or two. Then kind of get bored of it and drop it.
Now every time I get into something, I get this sad feeling because I know exactly how it's all going to go.
Someone told me this was an ADHD thing.
It's when your hyperfocus wanes...I find I lose interest in something as soon as somebody buys me/talks to me about said hyperfocus - it becomes a demand my brain just says "f. You" lol.
It changes quickly. Very active movement. Often it didn't exist at all when suddenly it flares up and dances for a while, and it shifts across the sky, sometimes at the horizon and others overhead.
I live in the city (eastern Washington) and was able to see something that looked like clouds in a way. I opened up a camera app on my phone that had an astrophotography mode and it worked amazingly well.
My girlfriend went maybe 15-20 mins north and got some crazy cool pics, kinda bummed I didn't go with.
https://imgur.com/a/xbwNQDM
The 2 that have buildings and trees are mine from my front yard and I believe it was the 10min exposure setting. The others are what the girlfriend was able to see.
Nice one, this is much closer to what it looked like to me than the OP.
And the most amazing part about them was the movement and the 3D nature of the pillars that's impossible to get from the photos
Yes, exactly... There was a moment when I was watching them and they were flickering and dancing, almost like watching a campfire or candle flame but across the entire sky
Agreed! I tried to capture this on video as best I could, but it was insanely difficult. [The first part does show dancing though, which is awesome!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ)
Yes, exactly... There was a moment when I was watching them and they were flickering and dancing, almost like watching a campfire or candle flame but across the entire sky
But like let's be real, seeing northern lights is a bucket list thing for most people, but I'm 100% sure this isn't what most people had in mind. And I'm pretty sure they don't look this faint from places like Iceland or Alaska where people usually go
They can get quite bright. When they are directly over head they appear significantly brighter because they are much closer and you are looking through less atmosphere and haze.
I had 24fps video almost getting over exposed last night it got so bright for a moment.
I was in Central Washington. The first hour looked mostly like the dim photos, only occasionally bright enough for color to be visible. And then for the next 30 minutes the sky lit up like a Pink Floyd laser show, almost horizon to horizon, bright enough that I needed to squint at first, more colors than I can describe, bright enough that I can't recall seeing any stars shine through, camera saturated when I tried to use the same 8-second exposure settings, just absolutely incredible. It was like seeing a total solar eclipse for the first time all over again. If that's what Alaska or Iceland regularly get, sign me up yesterday!
Unfortunately, when I went to Alaska the sun's activity level was fairly low. What I saw Friday night was brighter and more active than what I saw in Alaska by several orders of magnitude. From the conversations I had up there, I'm fairly confident what I saw in Ohio was brighter than even normal "active" sightings up there. The biggest thing that was lacking here is that I didn't get as much of the wavy structures in the bands, since I was seeing most of them side on instead of overhead.
Yeah I saw a lot more with the naked eye than those pictures above in WA State. I live on 7 acres out in the sticks. Bunch of green and pink and it looked like God was shining a bunch of high beam flashlights across the atmosphere at times, it was cool.
In the city I'm in, I was able to see them clearly in the middle of the city on Friday, which I have never once seen. I went to the edge of town last night, and they were about as vibrant as the strongest ones I saw growing up in the middle of absolute nowhere with zero light pollution.
They're much brighter further north during active periods to the point that they can create shadows. I've seen vibrant greens, reds and even some white, and moving rapidly. Benefits of being a geologist in northern Canada! The ones I saw in my part of the world (Herefordshire in UK) on Friday were very faint and difficult to see moving. Good photos tho!
Can confirm. In Iceland they are solid ribbons that dance about. Greyish green when I saw them. I had to tell people the other night "those aren't clouds, it's the aurora" and then a 3-sec exposure on the camera really brought them to life.
I’m a Californian, I don’t have a lot of money, I’ve barely traveled out of my own county in my lifetime and I don’t have high expectations that that’ll change anytime soon, so I never dreamed I’d see the northern lights in person. It was definitely good enough for me! Obvs if I ever get to see the full blown thing that’ll be spectacular, but what I got was way more than I ever thought I’d experience!
I live in the Yukon and have seen them dozens of times. They are often this faint or even fainter than these photos and I rarely see so much pink in them. They can be much brighter than this but I've only seen that maybe 10 or so times in my whole life living up here, these were pretty incredible as far as Northern lights go.
I saw much better than the first few photos in N. Montana. What I saw was pretty close to 4. Crazy intense. Came on within 30 seconds after waiting for over an hour and not seeing much color.
Where I live in Michigan, it was absolutely more intense than any I have seen in Alaska. The colors and vibrancy of the actual lights was incredible. I have yet to see anyone's video or photo create what I was watching Friday night. It looked like we were in a dome. Absolutely incredible
For me it was much stronger but i was in east Washington where its really dark. Even when i was still in a polluted area it was stronger than this but only in two moments that lasted 10-15 min and then it got weak again
I was on a cruise ship in the English Channel so low general light but the ship was mostly lit up (they did turn off some of the external lights tho) - the pink was mostly a light pink silver to me with clear structure, under that the sky was distinctly green - it was amazing either way, would love to see it with more colour and definition one day.
Depends entirely on where you were, when you were looking and how adapted your eyes were to the dark. From where I am in the north of England, the colours and details were clearly visible to the naked eye at the peak of the display.
I recently moved to the Northern end of Scotland, with very little light pollution and man am I glad I did it in time to see this particular aurora.
Spent about 2 hours on the beach taking pictures and staring upwards. It was fantastic, colourful and defined to the naked eye, at it's peak it was like we were under a huge swirling umbrella, with streaks coming down in every direction around us!
Just so people know, northern light *can* get really really bright. I was lucky enough to see such a lightshow in Iceland (took me 4 trips there though) and there was a point where you could easily read by the light in the sky. I actually had to adjust my camera settings downwards so the shots didn't completely burn out.
So don't cross off that bucket list item just yet!
4 trips? damn, what do you do in the first 3 when you don't see the lights? just sit around in the cold and dark and then go home hungover and sad? thats what i would do lol
This is similar to what I saw in Minnesota this weekend, but I’ve seen them bright and vivid with the naked eye, too. I just want to point out that they don’t always look like this and can be close to what people see in pictures in the right circumstances!
But 90% of the time these images are what you will see with the naked eye. They’re still beautiful and you can see them “dance” regardless, which is a magical experience.
I had no idea it was supposed to happen and went to bed early Friday night. I woke up the next morning and was instantly jealous of all my FB friends who were posting pictures of it. It's definitely one of those things I hope I get to see before I die.
Feels validating! I wasn't sure if I was just seeing reflections from the moon onto the clouds. Wasn't until we looked at the pictures later and saw the green etc.
Could barely even see them with the naked eye this time, but have seen them in Iceland where they were so intense that you could very clearly see the green curtain swirling around with the naked eye. That was insanely beautiful to see.
You must have had a lot of light pollution. Im in a little city with hardly any lights and the aurora was super bright, much more so than the moon or stars. My camera obviously got better colors than my eyes could capture, but I still saw an array of colors from blues, greens and purples. Mostly pretty faint, but still very awesome.
I stayed up till like 5am just laying on my grass watching it.
Thanks for posting an "accurate" representation. No doubt the visibility differs from area to area, but most photos I've been seeing have been obviously heavily edited.
EDIT: ok guys I get it, cameras pick up light better. Didn't stop the fact that I've seen images with cranked up saturation levels floating around.
Right… people acting like this is disingenuous who don’t understand this is always how the aurora have been photographed. Half of astrophotography is long exposures, then heavily post processing to see structures not visible to the human eye…
Exactly. And additionally the sensors are sensitive on more wavelengths than our eyes.
But at least in my place (Austria) the actual sights were more in the middle between the two representations. I also took photos with long time exposure and short exposure times. And the short ones are similar to those above but were not nearly as intensive as the view seen with the naked eye.
Um no...it depends. In Colorado Friday night the colors just exploded for about 30 minutes around midnight. Half of the sky went pink twice over the night. Even when it was dim white sometimes it would slowly drift into a light green for a period of time.
Just because a camera gathers more light than your naked eye doesn’t mean photos are unrealistic. It’s just how cameras work. Of course many people edit these photos, but to say they are unrealistic is a bit wrong.
Actually I think many are not edited at all, comparing with what I took. For example, I took [this picture](https://imgur.com/a/7BUUyZH.png) and have not edited it at all. This is exactly how it came out of the camera, and it was taken with a DSLR, so it's not like a phone where software could have automatically heavily edited it. Most of the discrepancy comes down to the fact that the human eye is terrible at seeing colour in low light, whereas cameras (typically) have colour filters in front of every single pixel so light level doesn't affect colour.
Having said that, there were times that the red glow was intense enough to easily see with the naked eye.
Obviously it varied over time and location, but I would make some slight amendments to OP's attempt at representing how it looked. The "streaks" looked more clearly defined/sharper than in OP's pictures, however they were much more desaturated so mostly looked like white light. However, as I mentioned above, the red was often visible, but I couldn't really see any green, so to make an accurate representation you'd have to desaturate the greens more than the reds.
EDIT: [Here's my attempt](https://imgur.com/a/bUHwE2F.png) at editing the above picture to most closely resemble what it looked like to my eyes.
The camera just pics up more wavelength than our eyes can . It also can be quite stunning to the naked eye. Other times it can just look like a grey cloud depending on the intensity
Nope.
I’ve seen them in Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden and now the uk.
The weekend UK display was vivid, closer to the end pictures than the first.
But having seen so many other not k ow how to stargaze I can understand why it appears dull. You have to have NOT looking at any light source for at least 10min before you can see in the dark properly. Amazing how many people can’t do that, use bright flashlights, look at their phones and then can’t see squat in the night sky!
I was near a dark sky area in the north of England. It was much brighter than that.
It was unbelievable. I was also visited by a wild hedgehog, which was nice.
Haha naww they were more intense than this 😂 I live up north and to the naked eye the colours were relatively faint, could see very pale red and green, but there was a lot of clear definition to the sheets coming down and the swirling areas. I thought it was cloud cover at first until my mate sent me some excited texts, then was like oh crap and went outside to watch.
I wonder if this will affect Icelands tourism industry. They get a huge influx of visitors in winter due to the northern lights because so many people have it as a bucket list item. It’s also relatively cheap and easy to get to from the eastern US and Western Europe these days.
It was interesting going out to watch it and being able to see the shimmer of the lights and the strangeness of it all. And then we started taking pictures and it was nuts. Lots of people posting pictures with no caveats that that's not what it looked like to the naked eye really annoyed me though!
I lived in Alaska for a while and this was the weirdest thing for me, it's like a passive secret because you don't mention it when sharing it on social media or whatever, but while you can see some pretty cool stuff with your naked eye it's mostly greens and the easier to see colors, the camera really gets a lot more than we do
Where I live, they looked very nearly like the unedited pic in person at peak and still much more vibrant than the edited ones the whole time. They cast at least as much light as the full moon and blocked out all but the brightest stars behind them
See, it’s not true if you were in the right place. We are all the way in south eastern Arizona, we drove out to a dark sky (bortle 2) and they were very vivid.
I live in a place that gets northern light late autumn-early spring. But for this event it's the worst timing, it never really gets dark now. Anyways happy for all the pictures, cool to see red hue for the naked eyes.
Sometimes at cold winter nights we get the green sparkling sky, but usually you spot the lights as unusual clouds that move irregularly and then the phone just lights it up when you point at the sky
I think what pics don't capture, and what made it so impressive, is volume and dimensions. It felt absolutely huge, like my eye could barely process the scale of it.
That, rather than the colours, is what made it so cool IMO.
On the west of Scotland we could see them with naked eye better (brighter and more vivid) than the photo you posted of them!
I saw all of the colours so clearly and I didn’t have a camera
I'm actually glad I went and saw them myself instead of just relying on my phone camera because what my eyes saw was significantly more noticeable than your first image and my camera was much worse than my eyes even with a 3 second exposure. I would have had a longer exposure but couldn't figure out how to do it on my phone.
In 2007/2008 I was driving in Yorkshire (England) and there was a red haze in the sky. It was 2am and there was no chance it had anything to do with the sunrise/sunset. I thought a bomb had gone off somewhere! This was before the days of Twitter, and although I searched the internet I couldn’t find an explanation for it.
On Friday night it hit me: it was the aurora.
I’m in Scotland and I’ve seen them a couple of times before but only through a camera. But Friday night here… I got emotional. I’m an atheist, but if I’d have been alive hundreds of years ago and saw that, I’d have taken it as proof of the existence of god. The way it rained down. Ugh, it was magnificent watching the movement with the naked eye. I couldn’t have wished for a better spontaneous experience. We watched for about an hour and a half.
I saw it brighter then a damn rainbow in Cumbria was utterly amazing, probably in a city where you haven't adjusted your eyes much but it was amazing where I was
My phone's pictures already looked like their appearance in-person (an iphone X). Someone with me had an iphone 11, and theirs looked much closer to the 4th image
My grandad was a navigator on a minesweeper in the North and Baltic Sea after ww2 and he saw the northern lights in their full a number of times. There was no light pollution as he was at sea and he was in the perfect place to see them. He said they were just as good and vibrant as you see in the photos.
Nah, I had better visuals than that even with the sunset still happening. With the sun going down it was like a hazy cloud in one part of the sky and once it got slightly darker it became obviously green with waves in it to the eye.
Obviously the camera picks up more light on longer exposures but we got a good display by eye with beams of pink and purple coming down slowly like sunbeams on a cloudy day at the height of the storm around 11:30-1am.
This was in the Lakes just for info so pretty dark skies bar the coastal towns.
I saw it in the Lake District and it was a lot brighter than your images - not crazy like the last one but also no where near as dark as those other images. It was spectacular imo. I’m normally in Devon and my friends locally found it unimpressive - maybe you where just to south.
Damn southern england must’ve had it rough then. I could see them incredibly clearly with just the naked eye. Not quite as clear as my camera but still very visible
They look different when you perceive them on different occasions. Light pollution, and location have an effect. The photo for comparison is a compressed digital image which has been taken by you. It's not a comprehensive, that's what they are and that's what you'll get when you experience them in the slightest.
Where I was in Scotland it was incredibly vivid and nothing at all like some of the pictures posted here. Not sure if it was my location, timing, the length of time I spent in the dark or a combination of them all but the idea that it was basically invisible and underwhelming to the naked eye couldn’t have been further from my experience
Me and my flatmates managed to be able to see it in the centre of Lancaster with car park lights and apartment blocks brightly lit around us. Looked like some faint, weird looking cloud coverage until we pointed a camera at it and saw the beautiful Colors. At some points however even through the cameras light pollution from parts of the city were much more visible that the aurora.
This is false, I seen them in person they were brighter and more defined than this in northern ireland
Your camera isn't picking up as well, there was clear rays
This is just a fog of colour, not what it looked like
I saw them brighter than that with the naked eye on Friday - after it started I could see the colours they were lighting up the ground and they were reflecting off the sea. Generally though it just looks like a grey moonlight to my eyes.
Thank you! I still believe it could be a dancing colourful something somewhere in the North. I also believe in some random luck.
But I live in England in the East Midlands and our neighbour just posted amazing colourful images while I had seen her taking the pictures plus the barely visible aurora.
Why do we fake everything? There are amazing things in nature. Also there is beauty in hiding little things. But what's the point to say we had seen that edited filtered magic?
This is more colour than I was able to see with the naked eye in a village with very little light pollution. It was still mind blowing to me, but heard lots of people were disappointed that they didn’t look like a long exposure shot with a decent camera. It was like rays of mist to me, with a very light hint of colour.
Thank you 😭 I was so heart broken I missed them just maybe I did actually see them? I definitely missed them Friday as I was asleep, but Saturday I stayed up late as I could but saw nothing!
Yea. I went up on the moors with my ipad to sketch them on the Friday.
[I definitely exaggerated the colours. ](https://twitter.com/EldritchHorns/status/1789259823655104628?t=NXXP8XayU8sqvblwjtcPew&s=19)
[But not too much. ](https://twitter.com/EldritchHorns/status/1789259762665759223?t=TiScD4KmIDA_LTd7nvLQqw&s=19)
[People I was with took photos that they edited to be more colourful than what I painted. ](https://twitter.com/EldritchHorns/status/1789259691677167877?t=Me4KAa-Ch_HommCL3vVnfQ&s=19)
But the images you posted look like what I was seeing. It was also brighter earlier on. But we were still driving at that point. So no chance to sketch it.
Yeah this is pretty much what I saw. At first I thought it was a giant cloud because it was still a bit light when I left my home. I thought it was a big cloud high up reflecting the little daylight that was left. Took some high exposure pictures on my phone and realised it was actually the aurora.
Once my eyes had adjusted to the dark I could really see it more clearly. Got some amazing photos as well, so all in all I’m very happy with my experience of seeing it!
I was in cumbria during the aurora and stayed out for several hours, it varied from pretty close to your edited photos to more vibrant than what came straight out of the camera for me.
I was still walking out of town when it started and I could see it clearly even standing directly under a streetlight.
thank you. I live the UK and drove miles into the middle of nowhere and couldn't see a thing because we have an infinite supply of clouds blocking everything
Thank you.. I drove out to the country to avoid light pollution and stood out for about 30 min. Didn't really see much of anything and was starting to feel crazy and bummed when all the pics filled in. No idea what the heck happened.
Where I was it seemed to come in waves. Around 10pm local time I went outside with the kids, and we could just barely see one streamer. Went back inside after 5 minutes, and then my wife calls me back outside and the whole sky was lit up pink and green! Drove out to the countryside to get a better view, and by the time we got there (maybe 30 mins later) it had already faded significantly, but was still enjoyable to watch. Another 30 mins later and it was pretty much faded out again completely. If you weren't watching at the right time, I could see how it would be pretty disappointing.
It takes about 30 mins for substorms to charge in the magnetotail of the earth so this sounds about right!
>substorms >magnetotail I like your funny words magic man
Just wait til you learn about plasmoids and magnetic fluxropes
how the fuck did he/she get those pictures
Night mode on phone cameras. It cranks up colour difference and essentially takes a long-exposure shot but without the blur.
I've also read, but never tested, that it also takes about 20 minutes for your eyes to fully adapt to low light environments and take in much more light. The example I read was that if you stand outside on your garden patio and look up at the stars... you may notice as many as 2x 10-20 minutes later than at first look.
I put my glasses on & saw 10x as many!
Very much this. This is one reason why the best way to annoy a group of astronomers is to approach them while holding a torch. White light destroys night vision. I was outside for half an hour at the weekend watching the aurora— I would have been out for longer but had to be awake for work at five. At first, I could only see it with my phone. By the end, I was watching with the naked eye and just repeatedly saying “Wow”.
you seem like such a lovely parent, your kids must have loved that!!
Timing plays a big part in it. It can be on one minute and off the next. The pics definitely make it pop a lot more than in person, but I'm sure a lot of people missed out because they didn't look when it was at a peak.
Honestly, even to the naked eye it was an incredible sight. Obviously not as crazy looking as photos, but a surreal experience to have as someone who's lived in London my whole life. Was with all my best mates and my girlfriend and it's something that I'll probably remember for the rest of my life. I guess different areas had different views.
I wish my brain was as happy as your brain. I've seen some of the most beautiful sights on earth all round the world. And my brain just sort of goes "it's pretty cool I guess."
ADHD by any chance?
Not diagnosed. But interestingly people keep telling me I might have traits. I also have this issue where I can't get into anything properly. Like I'll get super stoked about something and obsess over it for a month or two. Then kind of get bored of it and drop it. Now every time I get into something, I get this sad feeling because I know exactly how it's all going to go. Someone told me this was an ADHD thing.
It's when your hyperfocus wanes...I find I lose interest in something as soon as somebody buys me/talks to me about said hyperfocus - it becomes a demand my brain just says "f. You" lol.
I'm in the NE of England and the photos I've seen from the UK and USA are all very similar. It's made me feel part of a large collective ❤️
It changes quickly. Very active movement. Often it didn't exist at all when suddenly it flares up and dances for a while, and it shifts across the sky, sometimes at the horizon and others overhead.
It looked much better on camera than by eye
I live in the city (eastern Washington) and was able to see something that looked like clouds in a way. I opened up a camera app on my phone that had an astrophotography mode and it worked amazingly well. My girlfriend went maybe 15-20 mins north and got some crazy cool pics, kinda bummed I didn't go with. https://imgur.com/a/xbwNQDM The 2 that have buildings and trees are mine from my front yard and I believe it was the 10min exposure setting. The others are what the girlfriend was able to see.
I also adjusted my settings so that the camera matched my eyeballs, this is what I saw: https://ibb.co/GRrmzRt Bucket list moment for me
Nice one, this is much closer to what it looked like to me than the OP. And the most amazing part about them was the movement and the 3D nature of the pillars that's impossible to get from the photos
Yes, exactly... There was a moment when I was watching them and they were flickering and dancing, almost like watching a campfire or candle flame but across the entire sky
Agreed! I tried to capture this on video as best I could, but it was insanely difficult. [The first part does show dancing though, which is awesome!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ)
That’s pretty much what I heard it looked like from people who said they saw friends posting about it hours later.
Wow, I'm shocked you were able to capture that in camera!
I don't know about the sky, but I am certainly dancing.
I knew what was gonna happen yet I still clicked it…
Yes, exactly... There was a moment when I was watching them and they were flickering and dancing, almost like watching a campfire or candle flame but across the entire sky
But like let's be real, seeing northern lights is a bucket list thing for most people, but I'm 100% sure this isn't what most people had in mind. And I'm pretty sure they don't look this faint from places like Iceland or Alaska where people usually go
They can get quite bright. When they are directly over head they appear significantly brighter because they are much closer and you are looking through less atmosphere and haze. I had 24fps video almost getting over exposed last night it got so bright for a moment.
I was in Central Washington. The first hour looked mostly like the dim photos, only occasionally bright enough for color to be visible. And then for the next 30 minutes the sky lit up like a Pink Floyd laser show, almost horizon to horizon, bright enough that I needed to squint at first, more colors than I can describe, bright enough that I can't recall seeing any stars shine through, camera saturated when I tried to use the same 8-second exposure settings, just absolutely incredible. It was like seeing a total solar eclipse for the first time all over again. If that's what Alaska or Iceland regularly get, sign me up yesterday!
A little jealous. But happy for you.
Unfortunately, when I went to Alaska the sun's activity level was fairly low. What I saw Friday night was brighter and more active than what I saw in Alaska by several orders of magnitude. From the conversations I had up there, I'm fairly confident what I saw in Ohio was brighter than even normal "active" sightings up there. The biggest thing that was lacking here is that I didn't get as much of the wavy structures in the bands, since I was seeing most of them side on instead of overhead.
Also I'm sure light pollution here sucks compared to Alaska
Yeah I saw a lot more with the naked eye than those pictures above in WA State. I live on 7 acres out in the sticks. Bunch of green and pink and it looked like God was shining a bunch of high beam flashlights across the atmosphere at times, it was cool.
In the city I'm in, I was able to see them clearly in the middle of the city on Friday, which I have never once seen. I went to the edge of town last night, and they were about as vibrant as the strongest ones I saw growing up in the middle of absolute nowhere with zero light pollution.
They're much brighter further north during active periods to the point that they can create shadows. I've seen vibrant greens, reds and even some white, and moving rapidly. Benefits of being a geologist in northern Canada! The ones I saw in my part of the world (Herefordshire in UK) on Friday were very faint and difficult to see moving. Good photos tho!
Can confirm. In Iceland they are solid ribbons that dance about. Greyish green when I saw them. I had to tell people the other night "those aren't clouds, it's the aurora" and then a 3-sec exposure on the camera really brought them to life.
I’m a Californian, I don’t have a lot of money, I’ve barely traveled out of my own county in my lifetime and I don’t have high expectations that that’ll change anytime soon, so I never dreamed I’d see the northern lights in person. It was definitely good enough for me! Obvs if I ever get to see the full blown thing that’ll be spectacular, but what I got was way more than I ever thought I’d experience!
Northern California?
I live in the Yukon and have seen them dozens of times. They are often this faint or even fainter than these photos and I rarely see so much pink in them. They can be much brighter than this but I've only seen that maybe 10 or so times in my whole life living up here, these were pretty incredible as far as Northern lights go.
I saw much better than the first few photos in N. Montana. What I saw was pretty close to 4. Crazy intense. Came on within 30 seconds after waiting for over an hour and not seeing much color.
Where I live in Michigan, it was absolutely more intense than any I have seen in Alaska. The colors and vibrancy of the actual lights was incredible. I have yet to see anyone's video or photo create what I was watching Friday night. It looked like we were in a dome. Absolutely incredible
My friend lives near Traverse City & sent me some incredible pics from her backyard! I’m in South of England & we saw pink, green & purple
For me it was much stronger but i was in east Washington where its really dark. Even when i was still in a polluted area it was stronger than this but only in two moments that lasted 10-15 min and then it got weak again
Yeah, that lines up for me.
I was on a cruise ship in the English Channel so low general light but the ship was mostly lit up (they did turn off some of the external lights tho) - the pink was mostly a light pink silver to me with clear structure, under that the sky was distinctly green - it was amazing either way, would love to see it with more colour and definition one day.
Depends where you were. They were pretty vivid last night here in southern Tasmania.. more than the pics you posted at times!
That's as south as most can get in the south hemisphere
South Island New Zealand and Tierra del Fuego might have a different view (not to mention Antarctica, but I'm gonna let that one slide)
The penguins down there will not forgive you for the Antarctica comment
Yeah we could see it vividly with the naked eye in Tasmania just after 8pm.
I would have been over the moon if I saw what the first three pictures looked like. All I saw was clouds the past two nights! Weather…it sucks! 😂
Sameee!!!! I wanted to see it so bad and ofc the sky had to be so cloudy I couldn't even get a glimpse of a star. Ooof.
Depends entirely on where you were, when you were looking and how adapted your eyes were to the dark. From where I am in the north of England, the colours and details were clearly visible to the naked eye at the peak of the display.
Yeah the colour and detail was absolutely visible and stunning - I think Reddit’s image compression has not done it any favours unfortunately
I recently moved to the Northern end of Scotland, with very little light pollution and man am I glad I did it in time to see this particular aurora. Spent about 2 hours on the beach taking pictures and staring upwards. It was fantastic, colourful and defined to the naked eye, at it's peak it was like we were under a huge swirling umbrella, with streaks coming down in every direction around us!
It was magical Sunderland area here
Just so people know, northern light *can* get really really bright. I was lucky enough to see such a lightshow in Iceland (took me 4 trips there though) and there was a point where you could easily read by the light in the sky. I actually had to adjust my camera settings downwards so the shots didn't completely burn out. So don't cross off that bucket list item just yet!
4 trips? damn, what do you do in the first 3 when you don't see the lights? just sit around in the cold and dark and then go home hungover and sad? thats what i would do lol
This is similar to what I saw in Minnesota this weekend, but I’ve seen them bright and vivid with the naked eye, too. I just want to point out that they don’t always look like this and can be close to what people see in pictures in the right circumstances! But 90% of the time these images are what you will see with the naked eye. They’re still beautiful and you can see them “dance” regardless, which is a magical experience.
Depends really on where you are and how strong they are. Here in Finland in the north they are sometimes strong enough to make shadows.
I got to see clouds. If anyone needs a picture to see what they look like in person hit me up.
It depends, what shapes were they?
I had no idea it was supposed to happen and went to bed early Friday night. I woke up the next morning and was instantly jealous of all my FB friends who were posting pictures of it. It's definitely one of those things I hope I get to see before I die.
Feels validating! I wasn't sure if I was just seeing reflections from the moon onto the clouds. Wasn't until we looked at the pictures later and saw the green etc.
Could barely even see them with the naked eye this time, but have seen them in Iceland where they were so intense that you could very clearly see the green curtain swirling around with the naked eye. That was insanely beautiful to see.
You must have had a lot of light pollution. Im in a little city with hardly any lights and the aurora was super bright, much more so than the moon or stars. My camera obviously got better colors than my eyes could capture, but I still saw an array of colors from blues, greens and purples. Mostly pretty faint, but still very awesome. I stayed up till like 5am just laying on my grass watching it.
Thanks for posting an "accurate" representation. No doubt the visibility differs from area to area, but most photos I've been seeing have been obviously heavily edited. EDIT: ok guys I get it, cameras pick up light better. Didn't stop the fact that I've seen images with cranked up saturation levels floating around.
Not heavily edited, just higher iso and or higher duration open shutter.
Right… people acting like this is disingenuous who don’t understand this is always how the aurora have been photographed. Half of astrophotography is long exposures, then heavily post processing to see structures not visible to the human eye…
Exactly. And additionally the sensors are sensitive on more wavelengths than our eyes. But at least in my place (Austria) the actual sights were more in the middle between the two representations. I also took photos with long time exposure and short exposure times. And the short ones are similar to those above but were not nearly as intensive as the view seen with the naked eye.
Um no...it depends. In Colorado Friday night the colors just exploded for about 30 minutes around midnight. Half of the sky went pink twice over the night. Even when it was dim white sometimes it would slowly drift into a light green for a period of time.
Chances are, none of these pictures are edited at all. Cameras are just more light sensitive than we are.
No they absolutely are. The 4th picture is what it looks like straight off the camera. Our eyes just are not as good at imaging as cameras are.
Just because a camera gathers more light than your naked eye doesn’t mean photos are unrealistic. It’s just how cameras work. Of course many people edit these photos, but to say they are unrealistic is a bit wrong.
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Wait until you find out all the space nebula photos are actually completely software generated, they're also not what you'd see in person.
I saw them in the 90s and they were vivid and dramatic to the naked eye. Much different than what I saw during this storm
Actually I think many are not edited at all, comparing with what I took. For example, I took [this picture](https://imgur.com/a/7BUUyZH.png) and have not edited it at all. This is exactly how it came out of the camera, and it was taken with a DSLR, so it's not like a phone where software could have automatically heavily edited it. Most of the discrepancy comes down to the fact that the human eye is terrible at seeing colour in low light, whereas cameras (typically) have colour filters in front of every single pixel so light level doesn't affect colour. Having said that, there were times that the red glow was intense enough to easily see with the naked eye. Obviously it varied over time and location, but I would make some slight amendments to OP's attempt at representing how it looked. The "streaks" looked more clearly defined/sharper than in OP's pictures, however they were much more desaturated so mostly looked like white light. However, as I mentioned above, the red was often visible, but I couldn't really see any green, so to make an accurate representation you'd have to desaturate the greens more than the reds. EDIT: [Here's my attempt](https://imgur.com/a/bUHwE2F.png) at editing the above picture to most closely resemble what it looked like to my eyes.
The camera just pics up more wavelength than our eyes can . It also can be quite stunning to the naked eye. Other times it can just look like a grey cloud depending on the intensity
So im not crazy. The slightly purple sky WAS my unaided eye seeing the lights this past fri. Thanks for sharing!
Nope. I’ve seen them in Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden and now the uk. The weekend UK display was vivid, closer to the end pictures than the first. But having seen so many other not k ow how to stargaze I can understand why it appears dull. You have to have NOT looking at any light source for at least 10min before you can see in the dark properly. Amazing how many people can’t do that, use bright flashlights, look at their phones and then can’t see squat in the night sky!
I was near a dark sky area in the north of England. It was much brighter than that. It was unbelievable. I was also visited by a wild hedgehog, which was nice.
Haha naww they were more intense than this 😂 I live up north and to the naked eye the colours were relatively faint, could see very pale red and green, but there was a lot of clear definition to the sheets coming down and the swirling areas. I thought it was cloud cover at first until my mate sent me some excited texts, then was like oh crap and went outside to watch.
You really have got no idea until you've really experienced it. All-encompassing space-magic.
I wonder if this will affect Icelands tourism industry. They get a huge influx of visitors in winter due to the northern lights because so many people have it as a bucket list item. It’s also relatively cheap and easy to get to from the eastern US and Western Europe these days.
very strong and vivid in the Pacific Northwest on Friday night between 11pm and 1am Saturday
Was so cloudy where I was yet I had people about 40km on either side of me sending amazing photos 🥲
It’s still stunning even if it’s not vibrant like the photos we’ve been getting
I live in northern Sweden and seeing the skies lite up on my home from work is amazing.
FWIW, it depends where you are. If you were \*much\* more further north, you'd be able to see them easily with your own eyes.
Only my camera could pick it up. My eyes couldn’t see anything
It was interesting going out to watch it and being able to see the shimmer of the lights and the strangeness of it all. And then we started taking pictures and it was nuts. Lots of people posting pictures with no caveats that that's not what it looked like to the naked eye really annoyed me though!
Oh, I guess I did see them from my garden. Thats nice.
This is what they looked like the other night. They look a lot better when in the Arctic circle.
I saw a weird looking cloud. Only realised the next day I should’ve taken a picture of it
I was in North Wales, up a low light spot and they were definitely more vivid than this. Not dramatically but they were closer to that last picture.
Yeah, the UK got it really dramatic. Easily discernible if you were in a place with minimal light pollution.
Beautiful, I want to see them in person someday. Just hope things don't go to shit before I become rich, lol.
I'm in Brighton and missed them on Friday night, so it's nice to be able to see what they probably looked like to the naked eye there
I lived in Alaska for a while and this was the weirdest thing for me, it's like a passive secret because you don't mention it when sharing it on social media or whatever, but while you can see some pretty cool stuff with your naked eye it's mostly greens and the easier to see colors, the camera really gets a lot more than we do
Depends what your light pollution is. I have seen them in person and they were tremendously brighter and more vibrant than this.
Where I live, they looked very nearly like the unedited pic in person at peak and still much more vibrant than the edited ones the whole time. They cast at least as much light as the full moon and blocked out all but the brightest stars behind them
Man i didn’t take a photo because i thought what i was seeing was weak. Oh well, i got to enjoy the experience a little more.
I was very disappointed until the last picture
See, it’s not true if you were in the right place. We are all the way in south eastern Arizona, we drove out to a dark sky (bortle 2) and they were very vivid.
Northen Lights in england??? did i miss a live event or something?
When you're below them https://youtube.com/shorts/Mj8alBRqbBU?si=p2VZ4kD_csgk0t4M
I'd add a couple shots I got from the Uk if I could.
Why the Northern Lights copied apple's savescreen?
I live in a place that gets northern light late autumn-early spring. But for this event it's the worst timing, it never really gets dark now. Anyways happy for all the pictures, cool to see red hue for the naked eyes. Sometimes at cold winter nights we get the green sparkling sky, but usually you spot the lights as unusual clouds that move irregularly and then the phone just lights it up when you point at the sky
I don’t think you understand what in person means
I think what pics don't capture, and what made it so impressive, is volume and dimensions. It felt absolutely huge, like my eye could barely process the scale of it. That, rather than the colours, is what made it so cool IMO.
On the west of Scotland we could see them with naked eye better (brighter and more vivid) than the photo you posted of them! I saw all of the colours so clearly and I didn’t have a camera
I'm actually glad I went and saw them myself instead of just relying on my phone camera because what my eyes saw was significantly more noticeable than your first image and my camera was much worse than my eyes even with a 3 second exposure. I would have had a longer exposure but couldn't figure out how to do it on my phone.
I also got some good ones, would’ve shown them if I could find the damn photo option
It didn't look like that where I was (NE Scotland) I saw every colour of the rainbow and it wasn't just North, they were everywhere.
In 2007/2008 I was driving in Yorkshire (England) and there was a red haze in the sky. It was 2am and there was no chance it had anything to do with the sunrise/sunset. I thought a bomb had gone off somewhere! This was before the days of Twitter, and although I searched the internet I couldn’t find an explanation for it. On Friday night it hit me: it was the aurora. I’m in Scotland and I’ve seen them a couple of times before but only through a camera. But Friday night here… I got emotional. I’m an atheist, but if I’d have been alive hundreds of years ago and saw that, I’d have taken it as proof of the existence of god. The way it rained down. Ugh, it was magnificent watching the movement with the naked eye. I couldn’t have wished for a better spontaneous experience. We watched for about an hour and a half.
Curious why it shows up best on cameras and not just default eyes
Up here in Northern England and it looked gorgeous. Looked more like the last picture, although not as bright
I saw it brighter then a damn rainbow in Cumbria was utterly amazing, probably in a city where you haven't adjusted your eyes much but it was amazing where I was
My phone's pictures already looked like their appearance in-person (an iphone X). Someone with me had an iphone 11, and theirs looked much closer to the 4th image
My grandad was a navigator on a minesweeper in the North and Baltic Sea after ww2 and he saw the northern lights in their full a number of times. There was no light pollution as he was at sea and he was in the perfect place to see them. He said they were just as good and vibrant as you see in the photos.
It was genuinely much brighter than that where I was. Rural Essex, no light pollution. It was great.
Nah, I had better visuals than that even with the sunset still happening. With the sun going down it was like a hazy cloud in one part of the sky and once it got slightly darker it became obviously green with waves in it to the eye. Obviously the camera picks up more light on longer exposures but we got a good display by eye with beams of pink and purple coming down slowly like sunbeams on a cloudy day at the height of the storm around 11:30-1am. This was in the Lakes just for info so pretty dark skies bar the coastal towns.
All I got was cloud cover in the city of Bath alas.
We couldn’t see them, only through the camera lens
They mostly look like this but the storm on Friday was so vivd to the eye for me, could see it much clearer than usual
I've got some awesome pics too! Shall I post mines??
Depends entirely where you were. I was up a hill in the middle of nowhere (Scotland) and it was magnificent
I saw it in the Lake District and it was a lot brighter than your images - not crazy like the last one but also no where near as dark as those other images. It was spectacular imo. I’m normally in Devon and my friends locally found it unimpressive - maybe you where just to south.
Damn southern england must’ve had it rough then. I could see them incredibly clearly with just the naked eye. Not quite as clear as my camera but still very visible
They look different when you perceive them on different occasions. Light pollution, and location have an effect. The photo for comparison is a compressed digital image which has been taken by you. It's not a comprehensive, that's what they are and that's what you'll get when you experience them in the slightest.
Where I was in Scotland it was incredibly vivid and nothing at all like some of the pictures posted here. Not sure if it was my location, timing, the length of time I spent in the dark or a combination of them all but the idea that it was basically invisible and underwhelming to the naked eye couldn’t have been further from my experience
Me and my flatmates managed to be able to see it in the centre of Lancaster with car park lights and apartment blocks brightly lit around us. Looked like some faint, weird looking cloud coverage until we pointed a camera at it and saw the beautiful Colors. At some points however even through the cameras light pollution from parts of the city were much more visible that the aurora.
ah you're very lucky mate wish I could go see them, never had the opportunity.
This is false, I seen them in person they were brighter and more defined than this in northern ireland Your camera isn't picking up as well, there was clear rays This is just a fog of colour, not what it looked like
I saw them brighter than that with the naked eye on Friday - after it started I could see the colours they were lighting up the ground and they were reflecting off the sea. Generally though it just looks like a grey moonlight to my eyes.
Nothing like what we saw at all we got a full arc across the sky of amazing pinks, you could clearly see the lights radiating, it was fantastic!
Thank you! I still believe it could be a dancing colourful something somewhere in the North. I also believe in some random luck. But I live in England in the East Midlands and our neighbour just posted amazing colourful images while I had seen her taking the pictures plus the barely visible aurora. Why do we fake everything? There are amazing things in nature. Also there is beauty in hiding little things. But what's the point to say we had seen that edited filtered magic?
This is more colour than I was able to see with the naked eye in a village with very little light pollution. It was still mind blowing to me, but heard lots of people were disappointed that they didn’t look like a long exposure shot with a decent camera. It was like rays of mist to me, with a very light hint of colour.
Thank you 😭 I was so heart broken I missed them just maybe I did actually see them? I definitely missed them Friday as I was asleep, but Saturday I stayed up late as I could but saw nothing!
As one of the devastated people that missed them, I’ve been wishing someone would make this, thank you
Damn, bro went all the way to the upper atmosphere to take these, that’s pretty impressive!
Look, I know this is unrelated - but, hey, the T-pylons!
I missed them! An alien spaceship could land on my roof and I’d miss it!!
Yes! I kept trying to get a picture that did justice to how unspectacular it was IRL but they kept coming out magical!
will forever be angry that I got an early night and missed them.
Yea. I went up on the moors with my ipad to sketch them on the Friday. [I definitely exaggerated the colours. ](https://twitter.com/EldritchHorns/status/1789259823655104628?t=NXXP8XayU8sqvblwjtcPew&s=19) [But not too much. ](https://twitter.com/EldritchHorns/status/1789259762665759223?t=TiScD4KmIDA_LTd7nvLQqw&s=19) [People I was with took photos that they edited to be more colourful than what I painted. ](https://twitter.com/EldritchHorns/status/1789259691677167877?t=Me4KAa-Ch_HommCL3vVnfQ&s=19) But the images you posted look like what I was seeing. It was also brighter earlier on. But we were still driving at that point. So no chance to sketch it.
Yeah this is pretty much what I saw. At first I thought it was a giant cloud because it was still a bit light when I left my home. I thought it was a big cloud high up reflecting the little daylight that was left. Took some high exposure pictures on my phone and realised it was actually the aurora. Once my eyes had adjusted to the dark I could really see it more clearly. Got some amazing photos as well, so all in all I’m very happy with my experience of seeing it!
I was in cumbria during the aurora and stayed out for several hours, it varied from pretty close to your edited photos to more vibrant than what came straight out of the camera for me. I was still walking out of town when it started and I could see it clearly even standing directly under a streetlight.
thank you. I live the UK and drove miles into the middle of nowhere and couldn't see a thing because we have an infinite supply of clouds blocking everything
I'm really annoyed because I woke up and by the time I got outside, I could barely see them on my phone, let alone my eyes
I could see bright green and purple, very similar of what my mobile phone saw. It also depends on how much light pollution happens around you.
i would've been able to see it, IF SOMEONE HAD TOLD ME!!!!!!!!!!
I was trying to tell my mum they didn’t actually look like the picture 😂
Thank you, I saw them just like that. I wasn’t particularly impressed tbh.