And you need to ensure you have your night vision, ie you can see the night stars clearly, that means not looking at your camera phone screen! or any lights around you.
If you don’t you won’t see clearly with your eyes but your camera will.
If you have let your eyes fully adjust its spectacular as it indeed was last night and it might be again tonight and you will more clearly that a camera phone unless you do a time exposure.
Of the pics I posted, the first three from a dark sky location I would say were about half as bright with the naked eye, colours pretty close. Nothing done to enhance, just iPhone set on night exposure. The final pair that my son took at home, not such a dark sky location though only about 8 miles from first location, he said were quite a bit fainter than the pics, though clearly visible to the naked eye including the colours.
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By your measure, any photo taken with a modern phone is fake. They all manipulate the image resulting from the light hitting the sensor.
So is any taken with a film camera unless the exposure is adjusted to gather exactly the same amount of light as we see in the prevailing conditions (I.e no long exposure in semi-darkness)
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I’ve been really surprised how even my eyes/brains perspective of landscape has been influenced by art, let alone any way of reproducing what I ‘see’.
I’m eternally grateful for the way David Hockney’s landscape painting has helped me to see the colours that have always been there, ‘unseen’. Prior to experiencing his work, I just wasn’t paying enough attention to the colours that one can see in a landscape, even in mid-winter. My world is now a more vibrant place.
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From a different perspective, visual art generally does nothing for me, and there are very few paintings that have ever made me want to own them, let alone feel any emotion looking at them. But I can and do really appreciate natural beauty, including enhanced or unusual images nature.
Even an ordinary sunset becomes bright orange in an iPhone snapshot, which is annoying when the natural colours are more delicate pinks.
The a aurora had even greater differences for me - to the naked eye it was, except for a few brief spells, little more than a grey streak, but the phone camera shows it as mostly purple. Of course you can mess with it as much as you want, even just by editing with a phone camera.
This is the dullest shot I took a few nights ago:
Just for the hell of it, turn every adjustment on the phone up to max, and you get this:
Many phones will auto adjust images, raise the blacks and lower the whites, but will typically add noise in auto default JPEG’s mode . But quality phone cameras can take images in raw, which is what I did, which bypasses this unless you do in post processing.
I think a lot of people, perhaps those who live in suburban or urban areas have fallen out of practice of night vision which is a shame, the night sky is so beautiful with the naked eye.
This is the vision that can get when you walk home from the village pub with no torch, and with a clear night sky at the right times of year spectacularly shows the Milky Way. And the ground has that whispy grey colour… I have never seen a mobile phone capture that!
You need to give your eyes 10 to 20 minutes to adjust if you have come from a lit room or torch light in my experience. Quality night cameras will show image and controls in EVF in deep red so as not to disturb your night vision,
Example in this picture, with the naked eye the night glow from this large village about 6 miles away in the centre of this image is far brighter with night vision as well as the stars that you can see in my raw iPhone picture below. Though the brightness of the northern lights at this time probably subdued my night vision. The colours appeared more vibrant with my eyes than were shown in the iPhone image… this image was not processed at all.
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It looks like more spectacular aurora borealis displays will be heading our way, as last weeks sun spot cluster rotates back around to point to Earth again.
For those that follow solar weather, (I do for HF radio) it’s interesting to see that last weekend was fairly strong but historically modest solar storm peaking at a sedate -412nT. Even so despite this historically weak storm we now understand some planes were re routed in an attempt to minimise excessive radiation to crew and passengers, GPS systems temporarily failed, some Satellites were powered down, and SpaceX experienced glitches, and I understand satellite communication latencies increased, and New Zealand shut some of its National Grid down, and even orbit decay drag on the Hubble Telescope doubled and there were probably tens of thousands of failures and adjustments globally that are currently restricted/confidential for operational and commercial reasons.
However with all this, the current cycle 25 is predicted to be the weakest solar cycle for 200 years and cycle 24 wasn’t much stronger, so we may be able to expect increased solar activity perhaps over coming decades. In short we haven’t seen much solar activity over the last two decades or so… we have been starved of our light displays, and perhaps some of have become complacent on solar weather.
I live in the Home Counties, where obviously, there is a large amount of light pollution.
Although we’re in a village, you can still see the lights from the nearby towns.
I recall my first trip to the Isle of Skye. The night sky was breathtaking, I just didn’t realise how many stars you could actually see as if was so black.
DG…
Indeed, and of course it’s never black unless there is total cloud cover. Star light is wonderful and you can see surprisingly well with it, at least to walk by.
I live in East Suffolk in East Anglia with generally low light pollution and the night sky and Milky Way can be breath taking on a clear night … it can make you feel very insignificant in the Universe.
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Going to be in a remote Scottish Highland hotel celebrating my, and my twin’s 60th in two weeks. The Aurora would be the icing on the cake as we missed it recently.
Fingers crossed.
G
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I seem to remember from my amateur radio days that sun spot activity has an 11 year cycle causing the much revered ‘sporadic e’ phenomenon. I might have that wrong though
Hi, yes the cycle is 11 years, sporadic e will occur throughout the cycle though and is generally not that predictable, if you remember is a relatively low altitude ionization layer… but is a intense so is good at reflecting higher frequencies like VHF and UHF.
In the days of analogue TV it caused the so called ‘atmospherics’ , now it can impact mobile phone usage through interference as well FM radio and DTV.
Of course solar storms tend to cause radio blackout in HF.
Increased sun spot numbers in the cycle peaks do increase the ionization of the D, E and F layers… with the F layer being ideal for long distance sky wave… and when well ionized helps you talk to the other side of the planet on a few watts… which is always satisfying… talking to Australia or NZ from the UK directly without using anyone’s networks, fibres, cables, routers, systems or processes using a battery powered radio, a modest quarter wave antenna and nature is liberating. 
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Thanks Simon, yes I recall messing around back in early 80’s on the 26-27mhz bands using SSB and chatting with folks all over the world, an unusual one was more local when a chap from Scarborough came through which, from Dublin, was a rarity at those frequencies. All fascinating when you’re young and long before mobiles or internet too.
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I was fascinated by amateur radio as well, and particularly interested in moonbounce. Learnt what additional I needed for RAE, and had construction details for suitable transmitter - but never got around to doing either, all my disposable income going on my first love, music/hifi.
Yes moon bounce - I have done on 6 metres - and meteor scatter as well… all good fun - and a great insight into physics and nature
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IIRC it was 70cmI was looking at. But yes, fascinating subject all round!
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