In the May 11 issue of the Acton Exchange, we asked for your photos and stories about from last weekend’s rare local view of the aurora borealis. Lauren Rosenzweig caught the lights on camera on Marshall Path in north Acton, though her experience was the same as many. “Definitely the camera helped us see more colors. We could see streaks with the naked eye but not colors.”
John Horvath wrote, “My wife Janet and I saw the northern lights Friday Night about 10:30 pm from Jones Field (the closest site with an unobstructed view of the north sky). The night sky looked like it was covered in wispy clouds, but they moved quickly, appearing and disappearing. When we held up our phone’s camera, the colors were much more apparent. There was no need to look just at the northern horizon; the colors were 360 degrees around. When things calmed down and disappeared, assuming the show was over, we went back home. In case anything else happened overnight, I set up a time lapse camera on our roof. Waking up and reviewing what was captured, I was happy to see the display continued to increase in colors and activity, until almost an explosion of color around 4am. The display slows down as the sunrise fades the night sky. Here’s the timelapse as uploaded to youtube.”
The Acton Exchange asked three Acton scientists why they thought the northern lights looked so much brighter in cell phone images than what people saw directly. Each described a possible contributing effect. Astrophotographer Marcia Wilcox wrote, “The aurora borealis was only dimly visible to our unaided eyes because we don’t perceive color well at night … The rods and cones in our eyes perceive light. Cones are sensitive to color, but don’t work well in low light; while rods are sensitive to low light, but not color. I saw a faint pink in some of the clouds during the aurora. My iPhone camera revealed what my eyes couldn’t see.”
Optical physicist Ron Parenti thought the ability of cell phones to capture more of the red and infrared spectrum than our eyes do, may affect the outcome. Computational imaging scientist Bill Freeman said some cell phone cameras apply image processing to the images to brighten nighttime exposures and enhance the colors. He assumes that is an important contributor to the colorful outcomes. Luckily there are people interested in everything, including the aurora borealis, and the citizen science site Aurorasaurus has published a comparison of what the eye sees vs. what a camera sees, along with diagrams of the eye’s sensing system vs a camera’s sensing system.
Whatever combination of these effects, Acton people had some beautiful images to share. None of our readers complained about having fear of missing out, or FOMO, when they saw the infrared-enhanced cell phone photos taken by night owl neighbors. So mature! In any case, there may be additional chances to see the aurora from Acton in the coming months: the peak of the Sun’s 11-year cycle of activity is expected later this year, according to scientists interviewed by Nature magazine.
If you would like to contribute future Acton aurora observations to a global community-science database, check out NASA’s Aurorasaurus: Reporting Auroras From the Ground Up project. They offer advice on how best to photograph auroras, support new aurora watchers, and encourage you to input your aurora observation to a database used by both scientists and amateurs. They also welcome negative reports when an aurora was predicted but not observed.
Franny Osman is a volunteer editor and writer for the Acton Exchange.
Kim Kastens is a volunteer writer, editor and board member for the Acton Exchange.