My quick guess is that it is so dim, that our eyes are seeing it mostly with the rods (instead of the cones), which only see black and white. „In the night all cats are gray“
this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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Asklemmy
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Wait... Did you really just use the Benjamin Franklin grandma pussy quote for this?
Oh. I didn’t know this was a thing. In my mother tongue (German) it is like a normal expression.
Excuse me the what now
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advice_to_a_Friend_on_Choosing_a_Mistress?wprov=sfla1
Learn and be scarred
From reading the text, I speculate that Franklin was alluding to the preexisting saying as well -- alluding to the cat in the dark as an accepted axiom.
Uhhhh, I saw them yesterday in northen* hemisphere in Europe and they waren't white at all... So my guess would be that it depends from where you look at it ?
But in reality they are more dull than on pictures, because photographers use Long Exposure to make the color brighter than they actually appear.
Edit: Typo
A long exposure allows more of the light to be captured but that’s not the reason for the color discrepancy. They really are as colorful as they appear in photos but human night vision is primarily black and white. We just don’t see a lot of color unless it’s sufficiently bright and since auroras are still quite dim in absolute terms, our eyes aren’t capable of recognizing the full intensity of the color.
Hey thanks for the clarification :) ! I'm not a photographer nor educated enough in specific science domain.
I only pointed out what technique photographers use to make them appear so bright and colorful on pictures.
They really are as colorful as they appear in photos but human night vision is primarily black and white.
Does that even make sense? I mean, we are what we are, and we see what we see. There is noway that we could certainly know how they actually look like.
If a reptile looks at an Aurora Borealis, It would totally see it differently, and it's perspective would differ from ours.
With a camera you can change alot of attributes to make it appear b/w, sepia, more light, rgb, cmjn, infrared, flash... But that doesn't make it how they actually appear, I mean who is in charge to give the correct mixture of how much light, b/w, cmjn, rgb, infrared... to see the "real" manifestation ?
Personally, I think this is more a philosophical/metaphysic ¿? question, but I'm no expert in any of those subjects. I'm just relying on my personal experience and my feelings ^^.
Feel free to argument !
With a camera you can detect the actual RGB mix of the light regardless of the intensity of the light; our eyes can only detect the mix of colours if the intensity of the light is high enough
Because it's travelling backwards in time. That's why it appears in black and white. You're only seeing the past version of it.