Are these pics of the northern lights real? Is this possible to experience something like this? Or are most of these pictures photoshop?

36 comments

  2. it’s possible. with great luck, intense weather tracking and probably also a really good camera if you wanna show it off to others that you experience it with your own eyes

  5. It can be pretty impressive.

    But you need more than normal luck to see anything like this.

  6. Yes, they’re real. And these ones are only green. When they go purple is when the real show starts.

  7. It really does get this extreme and I am jealous of these people for being able to photograph it. (I know the theory of how its made… but I don’t think my cheap android is capable of doing it)

    The first one’s not entirely accurate though it doesn’t glow that much (at least not any time I’ve seen it) but that’s probably just how the camera captures it rather than “photoshop”

  8. From my experience viewing and photographing very active aurora, the colors and brightness are almost always more vivid in photographs than what you see with the naked eye.

  11. I live in the Oslo area, and I’ve seen Northern lights like this a couple of times (been a while now).
    Yes, they can be as colourful and massive as these.
    The photos are taken with longer exposure times,.and probably adjusted a little in photoshop, but they are very much real.

  12. The last one is how it looks like in real life without any light pollution around you to the naked eye. the rest looks like they are taken with special cameras

  13. In my experience the real deal is actually more impressive since it can move fast and its super bright! It honestly looks fake

  14. It’s highly variable. I live north of the polar circle, so I see northern lights regularly. It can be anything from a slight shade of white-ish green, almost reminiscent of a thin cloud, to massive bright green light shows across the entire sky.

    These pictures are often overly saturated and have long exposure, capturing more details and colors than what you will be able to see at any given moment. But they can also be just as amazing to witness in reality, and you can’t capture the motions on a picture like these. Because yes, the northern lights do «dance» – which is almost like waves across the beach.

  15. Most of the time, if they are not super-strong they will just look like a blue haze one may mistake for a cloud or smoke. Often times if it looks like this and you overexpose/increase exposure time the blue haze will turn into these colors. If they are super strong, they look like this to the naked eye

  16. yep it’s real, but long exposure shots make it indeed bigger and more vivid in pictures than real life. However, what is even more impressive is how it moves and the feeling of having light coming at you. IMHO it looks even better IRL because of the movement.

  17. Check this video, this is basically how they look in real life. The only “trick” is that northern lights vary a lot, most of them are not that strong, just a few smaller patches of greenish light. These huge ones lighting up the whole sky are rare. So dont expect to go for a few days and see something like that.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dUx7m0pHzjM

  18. I’ve seen them that way from Middle Norway on several occasions but you’ve got to be away from light pollution to get that level of intensity. They aren’t always that spectacular, sometimes they’re just a little smudge. Will say though, it took my mum a solid 14 years of visiting me Every Single Winter for 1-2 weeks at a time before she finally got to see a spectacular show herself last spring! There’d be so many times she’d get on her plane and the very next day, BAM aurora. So trying to see them when you don’t live in a place that gets them can be a frustrating luck driven affair.

  21. These are very saturated and bright. So the answer to your question. No.

    That said, I’ve been in Finnmark several times during winter and the northern lights can be absolutely spectacular.

  23. I live in northern Norway. I’ve seen Aurora Borealis thousands of times and I’ve never seen the colors being as bright as this

  25. This looks exaggerated. Long exposure, maybe some saturation.

    They do get very vivid and bright, but this is extreme.

  26. You would need high resolution OLED VR or so to do northern lights justice.

    Out in the wilderness where there is no light pollution, and you get one that rolls in massive waves over what feels like the whole sky when looking in that direction, is really spectacular.

    You need video, and it needs to be 3d/VR.

    ​

    Best comparison is when you go to a place with an amazing view, and you take a picture, and it just turns out like “meh” because it doesn’t represent the all-encompassing experience at all.

  27. The last picture is Tromsø and it actually can look like this. Even better. You should definitely come here in the winter season

  29. No 7 is definetly possible.

    Source: me who watches the Aurora every year chilling with my dogs out on sled tours and watching lights dance

  31. I served my conscription in the Norwegian Army in 1999. I was one of many thousands from down south to serve in the north of Norway.

    ​

    One excercise in winter we were not far from Alta in late january, we were a fireteam WAY out in the mountains, traversing the deep snow on skis in the middle of the night with only the clear sky as company. Because we were miles and miles from any source of light pollution, the dazzling display of Aurora I got to experience over almost two hours was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

    Compared to what I saw on this, and many other occasions, the pictures aren’t even close to the actual experience because the lights ARE MOVING AND SHIFTING ALL THE TIME.

  32. You’ll need to be at least above the arctic circle, and during perfect time of year with little light pollution. But yes, although all the pictures were taken with long exposure, you can experience it. The northern lights are usually pretty faint in the city, but if you go in the mountains during winter and you’re lucky, you could see extremely vibrant northern lights

  33. IRL the four last ones are close to reality. In periods I see it almost every day. People who is lives here and saw it all life still enjoy to see the lights. It’s very different every time in location, shape, movement and intensity.

  34. It depends on where in norway and when, but in Alta we do have northern lights like that during winter (sometimes its as spectacular as the pictures, sometimes its more mediocre)

  35. they’re not photoshopped, but the camera are set to have a very slow shutter speed (aka letting more light in per photo).

    if you take a regular photo you won’t capture enough light to capture how it actually looked. being from the north, I would say the first, second, and forth pictures are a bit too much, the northern lights are never white like that – that’s bad photography and overexposing the sensor lol. but the other ones look pretty accurate to how the northern lights look. i would say the last picture has the most realistic northern lights.

    the problem is that with slow shutter speed EVERYTHING get’s brighter, so the city lights etc will look extremely weird and fake, and not at all how they look irl. that also goes for the night sky and the ground. the northern lights does not light up the ground and mountains like that at all. it’s often just pitch fucking black, with the sky shining bright green. you can see reflections on the water and maybe a green tint on the snow in the mountains, but everything doesn’t glow like all these photos show (again, the last photo is the most realistic one regarding northern lights and the sky imo). it’s an artifact from using the slow shutter, making it feel fake and photoshopped – but it’s the only way to convey how the light in the northern lights look.

    so for these pictures I would say: northern lights look realistic to how they can SOMETIMES look (not always, it’s more often than not “mediocre”), while everything else in these photos look weird.

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