Out of Pod Experience

Surely you've seen many filmings/pictures of auroras (northern lights), but they all have a small issue: they do no reflect at all what you'd see with your naked eye!

Those images have lots of color, whereas in dim light our eyes barely see any color. Auroras are faint and pale, with only hints of color. Also we see time-lapse videos where aurorae shift dramatically at fast pace -unlike reality, since, although some phenomena are quite fast and change in seconds, the usual aurora is a static event, slowly shifting over minutes, not unlike clouds.

So, here's a video by a digital artist, inspired by a Danish painter sent to paint auroas in the late XiX century and who reflected them truthfully to the eye -since there was no color photography to bias his perception.

The video has been processed to desaturate color and frames have been intercalated so the phenomeona happen in real speed rather than timelapse.

It is not a simpressive as the usual auroras video, and yet I find it tantalizing. And, of course, it is realistic...

What The Aurora Really Looks Like, by Phil Hart (inspired by Harald Moltke)