Last August, on the calm waters of Lake Michigan, Chicago resident Karl Dusterhaus, 34, encountered an unusual phenomenon called the aurora borealis, which appeared as hazy colors in the brighter-than-usual night sky. He said it was a great experience, but he was surprised when he saw the cell phone photos he took the night before.
“The colors are more distinct,” he said.
Mr. Dusterhaus was not the only one who was shocked by the difference between the subtle colors perceived by the naked eye and the vivid hues that appear in digital photographs. Many travelers, some drawn by the stunning images on social media, are also noticing the difference.
The solar activity that causes the aurora borealis is expected to reach its 11-year peak next year, and opportunities to see the aurora on cruises, train trips and tours are rapidly increasing. Aurora tourism is expected to generate $843 million in 2023 and grow nearly 10% annually through 2030, according to market research firm Grand View Research.
Wilderness Travel, a Berkeley, Calif.-based travel company, says bookings for winter trips to Iceland have increased an average of 130% each year since 2021, driven primarily by Northern Lights seekers. did. Aurora viewing rates are up more than 70% this winter compared to last year.
The number of winter hotel guests in Tromsø, a northern Norwegian coastal town popular for viewing the northern lights, has increased by 7% since 2019, to more than 202,000 from January to April 2024, according to Visit Norway. It became. Last spring, Norway-based cruise company Hurtigruten appointed astronomer Tom Kaas as its first “chief aurora hunter” aboard its increasingly popular winter cruises off the coast of Norway. I decided to do it.
A growing interest in nature-based travel, space travel, and a better understanding of how and when auroras occur are driving the popularity of aurora tourism. But some aurora experts say they have cellphone cameras, which have produced many of the colorful images that have appeared on social media, especially in the past year. Borealis Basecamp, located in Fairbanks, Alaska, is a resort with 40 cabins dedicated to Northern Lights viewing, and management has announced that before guests arrive, there will be a number of images between the real-life sights and some images that can be witnessed. So much so that we inform our guests about the sexual bay. (The season from fall to spring is sold out.)
“There were two answers,” said Adriel Butler, founder and CEO of Borealis Basecamp. One is disappointment. The other is more nuanced. “They'll say, 'All the photos have been retouched and edited with larger-than-life images, but what I'm about to see is actually real.'
To understand what causes aurora borealis and how we see them differently than cameras do, we consulted experts.
What causes the aurora borealis?
Scott Engle, assistant professor of astrophysics and planetary science at Villanova University in Villanova, Pennsylvania, explains that the auroral phenomenon is the visual result of particles emitted by the sun encountering the Earth's atmosphere. did.
“The sun is constantly losing a little bit of its own mass, and that's what we call the solar wind,” he says. “They collide with whatever gas is present in Earth's atmosphere, giving it that energy and causing it to glow.”
The sun repeats its activity every 11 years. They have been more active over the past year and sightings have increased.
“When the sun's activity is at or near maximum, the density levels of these particles in the solar wind increase,” Engle said.
Shannon Schmoll, director of Michigan State University's Abrams Planetarium in East Lansing, Michigan, said the light appears in a roughly ring-shaped band around Earth's magnetic poles, known as the auroral ellipse. Capture images above popular northern lights destinations such as Canada, Alaska, and Iceland.
“As the storm gets stronger, that oval where you can see the aurora will be pushed further south,” Schmol said.
What role does digital photography play for aurora enthusiasts?
Before the advent of digital photography, capturing vivid photos of the aurora borealis required deep knowledge of camera exposure and film speed, good timing, and luck.
Lance Keimig, a Vermont-based photographer and partner with National Parks at Night, an organization that teaches night photography around the world, says that around 2008, the advent of low-light-sensitive digital cameras He said the situation has changed.
Early light-sensitive cameras “made it possible for people who were already doing night photography to take it to the next level,” Keimig said, adding that this technology was introduced in the next generation of cameras around 2012. He added that it became popular among more casual photographers.
Similar technology is now available to more aurora viewers, as light-sensitive cell phone cameras were introduced before the peak of the current 11-year solar cycle, and sightings have reached as far as Florida. Ta. In 2018, Google's Pixel camera introduced “Night Sight,” allowing you to capture clearer images even in low-light conditions. The iPhone's “Night Mode” was introduced the following year. Advances in photo editing apps and lightweight equipment have made night photography even more brilliant.
Sean J. Bentley, an associate professor of physics at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York, said camera technology has improved since the last solar cycle, which lasted from 2008 to 2019, to get better images. listed.
“Even down to the last peak in early 2014, most digital cameras (including basically all digital cameras on mobile phones) still capture good night images of bright, stable celestial objects such as the moon, or worse, the aurora borealis. ” Bentley wrote in an email.
Gondwana Ecotours, which has been offering northern lights itineraries in Fairbanks, Alaska since 2013, has seen a 20% increase in trip bookings over the past two seasons.
“When we first started this tour, it was impossible to photograph the aurora borealis with a cell phone,” said company president Jared Sternberg. “You can now take more than a decent image of the Northern Lights with your iPhone or other smartphone.”
Why is my camera seeing more than my eyes?
Technology lenses are better than human lenses when it comes to night vision. Basically, photoreceptors in the eye take two main forms: rods and cones. Rods are more sensitive to light but cannot detect color. When there is enough light, the cones are activated and determine the color.
“As we experience whenever we wake up in the middle of the night, we have trouble distinguishing between colors when we are in a dark environment,” Bentley writes.
Villanova University's Engle said cameras are more effective at detecting color because they can handle longer exposures than the eye.
“Digital detectors in cameras are likely to be much more sensitive to red wavelengths of light than the human eye, and would be better able to extract longer, red wavelengths,” Engle said. .
There are a number of other AI-based enhancements to cell phone cameras that can now produce shots that were once only possible with high-end cameras. For example, you can take many photos in quick succession and use technology to combine the photos to get a clearer, more colorful, and sharper image.
So, are those aurora photos real?
Douglas Goodwin, a Fletcher-Jones scholar in computing and visiting assistant professor of media studies at Scripps College in Claremont, Calif., published an article on the subject in May for the nonprofit news site The Conversation. Posted. In his article, Goodwin created two images of the aurora borealis by removing enhancements commonly made with smartphone cameras. One is close to the naked eye and the other was taken with a mobile phone camera.
“The phone exaggerates it a little bit, but it doesn't completely confuse it,” Goodwin said in an interview. “They understand it better than we do.”
Nori Gemil, a London-based photographer and author of The Travel Photographer's Way, has taught photography classes in Iceland and Patagonia. According to her, the phone's camera automatically performs normal post-production tasks such as “photoshopping, overlaying images, enhancing colors, extracting invisible parts, etc.” It's not fake, but it uses computer algorithms to put everything together to create an amazing effect. ”
How can I photograph the Northern Lights?
Please stay up late. According to NOAA, the lights are most active within an hour or two of midnight.
Stephanie Vermilion, a Cleveland-based space tourism writer and photographer and author of “100 Nights of a Lifetime: The Ultimate Adventure in the World After Dark,'' says that when she goes on a photography expedition, she He said he scanned the horizon with his cell phone camera. He sees all the activity because “they see it better than I do.”
She sets her camera to shoot in time-lapse mode (she recommends the NightCap app for iPhone users) and observes the display with her own eyes.
“If you’re constantly fiddling with your camera, you’re ruining the moment,” Vermillion said.
Joe Buffalo Child, whose company North Star Adventures offers guided aurora viewing in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, advises viewers to document more than just photos. I am doing it. “Mobile phones have built-in AI capabilities that allow them to capture enhanced aurora borealis,” he said. “However, as we always say on our tours, enjoy the Northern Lights with your eyes and your heart.”
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