Why the Aurora Borealis Is Better Viewed Through a Phone Camera Than with the Naked Eye

Aurora Borealis, or the Northern Lights, are among the most breathtaking natural spectacles of our world and, for centuries, have gained interest among travelers and sky-watchers. The shimmering dancing colors lighting up the night sky comprise a scene that most people dream of witnessing in person. But what catches many first-time chasers off guard is that the Northern Lights often do show up more brilliant and spectacular through a camera on a mobile phone than it does in real life. And this contrast between real life and digital capture really puzzles many: “Why does my camera see the aurora better than I do?”

Here’s the science and technology behind why the Northern Lights are often more vividly displayed on your phone’s screen than through your very eyes.

Limitations in the Human Eye vs. Camera Sensors

The basic reason why the aurora looks somewhat different on your phone has to do with how our eyes and cameras work.

• Low-Light Human Vision: The two types of cells that take care of vision in our eyes are rods and cones. Rods are responsible for the vision in low light, while cones detect color. In darkness or at night, our rods take over, but they’re not quite as good at detecting color as cones are. In other words, when you’re seeing the Northern Lights in a dark sky, your eye struggles to catch the full range of colors, especially if the aurora is faint or far away. What you may see as dim greenish-gray waves to the naked eye is actually much more colorful than what you can perceive.
• Camera Sensors: The camera sensors of phone cameras are quite different. Even in dim light conditions, the camera sensor can pick up more color and details than our eyes can. Well, for one, cameras can “see” the reds, purples, and deeper greens that our eyes might miss in the aurora, thus making it more dramatic in photos. Another factor is that cameras can be adjusted to allow longer exposure times, thus capturing more light and detail in one image, thereby enhancing the appearance of the aurora.

Long Exposure Photography Enhances the Experience

Photographers use a long exposure technique to capture more light when shooting the Northern Lights than is visible in real time. Many new smartphones offer a night mode or manual mode that can sometimes give your phone the ability to “see” more of the aurora than your naked eye.

• Long Exposure Effect: In the case of a long exposure shot, the sensor is open longer and absorbs more light. That means, in the case of an aurora, it captures more of the colours and movement that you cannot actually see. Indeed, the extended exposure makes the aurora look very intensive and smooth, shining its brilliant colours and fluid motion-something our eyes are not capable of.
• Human Eye Reality: Whereas the human eyes, in fact, perceive light continuously and do not “collect” light over time as would a camera, we might appreciate the movement and general shape of an aurora but often cannot perceive many vivid details brought to life by the camera.

Color Perception And Sensitivity

But another critical divergence, however, is color: what our eyes see and what the phone camera captures. That comes down to both the limitations of our visual perception in dim light, and the way phone cameras process color.

• Eyes in the Dark: As discussed previously, in the case of low light conditions, our rod cells take over and are not sensitive to color. The greens in the aurora that we most often perceive are therefore usually easier for our eyes to detect since human vision is most sensitive to green light. The more rare pinks, reds, and blues that sometimes pop up in the aurora are much harder for us to perceive.
• Phone Cameras and Color Saturation: The camera of your phone does not rely on the same biology. It can pick up colors out of our natural range of low-light vision and amplify them. Phones with advanced AI and image processing also automatically tend to increase saturation, thereby making the colors of the aurora more vivid and heavy when shot compared to looking at it in real life.

Dynamic Range and Light Processing

The modern-day smartphones feature advanced technology that can handle a wide range of lighting conditions. Especially the phones with night mode or HDR  that allows for balancing of light in an image by making areas that would otherwise be very dark much brighter without letting brighter areas become too bright.

• Dynamic Range in Cameras: When you take shots of the aurora, the camera in your phone automatically enhances the image to expose the whole frame, showing the dim lights of the sky and the details of the landscape simultaneously. Thus, it makes the aurora appear much more spectacular in pictures compared to looking at it directly.
• The Limitation of Our Eyes: Unfortunately, our eyes don’t have the same dynamic range. They fight to balance out the brightness of the aurora against the darkness of the sky and often make the lights seem a lot dimmer and less vivid than what the camera captures.

Faster Visual Feedback in Phones

Cameras can take a longer record of a scene and compress all that information into one, much more informative snapshot. In terms of the Northern Lights, this means a camera is able to capture more of that information generated by the light over time, in order to show a very much more informative, colorful picture of the aurora than the brief views our eyes are capable of.

More Rapid Feedback: Smartphones have real-time visual processing to enhance what is there in front of your eyes, instantaneously. While your eyes take time to acclimatize to the change in light and color of the aurora, the camera on your phone does the same in minutes-even seconds-presenting you with a more clear and colorful picture in a much shorter timespan.

Camera’s Advantage

While nothing beats the wonder of actually witnessing the Northern Lights, for those who know how to use them, modern smartphones give us a chance to both capture and enhance what our eyes can miss. The limitations of human vision in low-light conditions, added to the capability of a phone camera to gather more light, adjust exposure, and enhance colors, often make images well beyond reality.

While you might be slightly disappointed when you realize that the Northern Lights aren’t as bright in real life as in all those pictures you’ve seen, well, that says nothing about your experience, but more about how your eyes work. With a phone camera, though, you’ll truly capture the magic of the aurora-maybe even better than your eyes ever could.