Can You See The Colour of the Aurora With Your Naked Eye?

Aurora season is starting again and it feels like a much higher proportion of the world is starting to have a focus on aurora. Some of this is down to the huge geomagnetic storm we had on the 10th of May and also because we are soon to be at solar maximum. Both of these have led to a lot more media and also a lot of incorrect information. I thought I would address some of this misinformation and also help people out if they are wanting to see aurora for the 1st time.

So why should I feel that I’m in a position to write a blog? Why should I have any more information than anyone else to correct misinformation? I have worked as an aurora guide since 2014 (with Lights Over Lapland) and I have been photographing auroras since 2011 so I have literally seen 1000’s of auroras. But more importantly I have seen the reactions well over 5000 people seeing the aurora and it’s from this experience that I feel that I’m in a good position to present this information.

The 1st thing I want to talk about are these type of memes that I keep seeing on social media

I have made the above meme which was from a geomagnetic storm on the 1st of December 2023 and it was a night to remember. I keep seeing these memes from people saying that you can’t see any colour from the aurora with the naked eye and that you can only see the colour of the aurora through a camera with a long exposure (ie the cameras shutter is open for 30 seconds).

The actual image of the aurora that night looked like this to me (and this was a one second exposure very bright aurora and I think it was a full moon);

To say you can’t see the colour of the aurora with the naked eye is a false statement it’s simply not true but there are elements of complexity to the statement and it’s impacted by a number of factors which I will go through in more detail;

1. There is a huge variability in how peoples eyes interpret the aurora or how well people can see colour during the night. The first time I realised this was when two friends came out to visit me in Sweden and we were watching a reasonable aurora which to me was green and was moving in pillars across the sky. My friend Rob stated I’m amazed at the different greens I can see across the sky and his wife Jen then stated she could see movement but only grey. Since then, which was ten years ago, I have had this conversation countless times. I would say if I have a group of 8 people out watching aurora there will generally be 2-3 people who can’t see any or much colour. This number does decrease if you get brighter auroras but I’ll come onto that later… I have also noted not being able to see the colour does seem to be linked to age and the younger the clients are the higher the proportion of people can see the colours more vividly. What this also means is that those people who can’t see the colour assume that’s what everyone sees and vice versa. I know from experience I find it hard to see the red, easier to see the green and the pink colours are very obvious to me.
2. It takes 20 minutes for your eyes to get used to the dark and that “night vision” goes completely and instantly when you look at a bright light. So this means if you want to see the aurora at it’s best you have to be away from any light sources for twenty minutes. That means not having a torch on, not looking through a camera view finder and most importantly not looking at a bright phone screen. Obviously when you go out to watch aurora it is dark and you will probably use a head torch to get about, but get it turned off as soon as you can. For any camera or phone screens you may be using turn the brightness down as much as you can but even then it’s going to have an impact to your night vision and how you see the aurora. When I’m guiding if the aurora starts to get big, bright and fast moving I advise my clients to leave the cameras and phones untouched and just watch it to get the best experience.
3. You can only see colour when there is light which sounds contradictory to point no 2. But if you go out at night time and there’s not much light pollution or moonlight and you are with 3 friends one is wearing a blue jacket, another a red one and the last a green. It would be impossible to see what colours the jackets are because the rod and cone structures in our eyes require light to determine the colour. The interaction of the solar wind with different gasses in the atmosphere cause lights of different colours. Now if it’s a weak aurora only a little light is given out and it’s harder to see the colour if it’s a stronger aurora and brighter it’s easier to see the colour as more light is present. I have seen peoples experience change as auroras have got brighter during the night and heard them say I can see it green now.
4. The further you are from the source of the aurora light the dimmer the light will be and the more difficult it will be to see the colour. Therefore if you watching the aurora in the UK you are often watching the aurora close to the horizon in the North and it’s very far away but if you are in the north of Sweden and the aurora is above your head and filling the sky the experience is going to very different. I have seen auroras that strong that I have seen my own shadow on the snow caused by the aurora!
5. An assumption that eyes and cameras work in the same way which of course they don’t
   1. Camera are not relying on rod and cones to see colour at night time. Cameras actually record a digital representation of the colour of the light when photons hit a digital sensor sot eh camera should record the actual colour of the light
   2. You can’t change the shutter speed of your eyes! With a camera if you take a picture at 1 second exposure (ie the camera let's light in for 1 second) and then you take another picture at a 10 second exposure then the 2nd image will be ten times as bright. Obviously this makes a huge difference in the resulting image.
   3. Once the image has been taken then of course the image can be edited. As an observer of an image you are generally not going to know what the photographer did to the image. Did they just tweak it or has it been heavily edited. I often see people posting on social media saying unedited image from my phone. Although they have meant this with honest intentions modern phones prettily heavily edit the images for you! And of course the brighter and more colourful the aurora the better the news story...

I could go on with more variables but I think these are the key ones and as you can see it’s quite a complicated subject! But yes you definitely can see the colours of the aurora with the naked eye, especially if you see medium to strong auroras and your eyes have fully adjusted to the dark. 

I can understand how these memes have been created if you are one of those people who struggle with colour at night (and might not know it), have never seen strong auroras and can't tell when an image is heavily processed then your expectation may not be the same as the reality especially seeing a weak aurora. There is a huge difference between seeing a weak and a very strong aurora with a weaker aurora it's easy to photography it in a way that it will look stronger than it does to the eye, but, with a strong aurora it's much better to the eye and the photographs don't do it justice (it really needs to be experienced in person).

Hopefully if you understand the points listed it will improve your understanding and experience of the subject. 

I was going to write more about additional tips in seeing the aurora but I shall save that for another blog!

Feel free to ask any questions and I shall endeavour to answer them.

Good luck looking for auroras and I'll leave with a gallery of some of my favourite auroa images from last season :)