Did You Make This Same Rookie Mistake When Watching the Northern Lights in Maine?

Guys, I'm not going to pretend like I knew any better last night, October 10, when I was one of the thousands trying to chase the Northern Lights around Maine.

I ran my happy ass to Cape Elizabeth thinking a really cool ocean-front view of the sky at Two Lights Park would be perfect.

Suddenly, my entire feed was bombarded with stories and posts capturing these beautiful neon pink, bright purple and bright green lights tricking me into thinking if I went to the right spot, I too could witness all these gorgeous colors to my naked eye.

Boy, was I wrong.

I had no idea you couldn't witness the true brightness of these lights unless you put a lens to it like your iPhone. I like to put my phone down and live in the moment after work hours, so that's exactly what I did.

I threw a fit outside thinking other people were able to see these bright colors except for me until I realized nobody else is seeing these bright colors with their own two eyes either.

Can you see the Northern Lights to the naked human eye?

The long scientific answer is technically yes, but you really can only see the faded colors in the sky enough to know they're there.

Yet, according to earthsky, the human eye views the Northern Lights generally in faint colors and as shades of grey and white. Camera lenses are our savings grace here.

Here's what the naked eye sees vs. a camera lense:

"While DSLR camera sensors don’t have the same limitation as our eyes. Couple that fact with long exposure times and high ISO settings of modern cameras, and it’s quite evident that the camera sensor has a much higher dynamic range of vision in the dark than we do".

A sidenote; this same thing applies to the Milky Way and night photography in general. Yay, another reason for us to be so dependent on our phones!