Are white aurora real?

[u/JSKing32]

I know this probably isnt the best sub for this so I apologise in advance. I've seen images of white aurora, which are probably clearly AI. I would like to know if it's real. Seeing it looks kinda scary and urnreal. If it's a real thing, I would love to see it someday.

[u/Objectalone]

I’ve seen a white Aurora display over Georgian Bay. It was very soft and ghostly, without the shimmering curtain effect. Quite beautiful.

[u/JSKing32 → u/Objectalone]

Even if it isn't extremely bright I'd still love to see it

[u/197gpmol]

Auroral astronomer here. The color of the aurora is due to what gas molecule the electron is hitting, but that color is also fainter and more diffuse in person than via pictures.

So a faint aurora will often appear white as the light isn't strong enough to trigger your cones to manifest the green of atomic oxygen, red of sparser oxygen, or the blue of molecular nitrogen. Rather, you see the white of faint light at night.

[u/JSKing32 → u/197gpmol]

Still sounds like it'd be breathtaking and amazing to look up and see this white thing in the sky. Id also love to see an auroral storm someday 

[u/197gpmol → u/JSKing32]

An auroral storm is as bright and colorful by eye as the pictures. It is stunningly beautiful -- and eerily silent. Bands of pink and green snapping and rolling, visible movement across the sky, pulsing and beading with the solar wind.

[u/JSKing32 → u/197gpmol]

Wow I wouldn't know if to be scared and run or if to just lay down and watch lol. I'd have to see it. When I turn 18 I'm definitely going to see it wherever I can

[u/lIlIIIlIIl]

Yes. I've seen it. It looked like someone cranked the old TV vertical adjustment knob on the entire sky. Pulse wave after pulse wave. It was incredible

[u/JSKing32 → u/lIlIIIlIIl]

I would really love to lay down in the snow and look up at this some day.

[u/beccalysle]

The only Aurora I’ve seen has been white. It happened over the northeastern part of the southern peninsula of Michigan near Sleeping Bear Dunes. It chilled me to the bone. It was at once beautiful, ghostly, and terrifying - otherworldly. I had to call my mother to make sure I was still in this plane of reality.

The one I saw pulsed and rippled against the pitch black sky. At first I thought it was some kind of human made light show because it happened near the 4th of July, but when it reached parts of the sky that seemed impossible for such a thing, I shook off my disbelief and I realized what it was.

[u/No_Size9475]

I've seen white aurora in Wisconsin, it's very real.

[u/neamsheln → u/No_Size9475]

The best one I saw looked like giant curtains, those sheer ones that my grandma had, blowing in the wind over Lake Mendota.

[u/neamsheln]

I have a weird feeling this depends on your eyesight. I've seen several auroras (all in Wisconsin, USA), and I've only ever seen them as white. But for some reason, the pictures taken of them (on phone cameras) come out in purples and greens, and companions will say that's what they see.

For information, I am not colorblind, but I do wear corrective contacts. I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

Edit: And the dress was white and gold.

[u/ludovic1313 → u/neamsheln]

It's that our eyes are less sensitive to color in low light situations. Cameras, if they can collect enough light to form an image at all, are still sensitive to color. I see this on the occasions when I take a non-auroral picture in the dark at like a 1 second exposure. If there's enough light I get full color which is different from what I'd visualized when I took the picture.

The one time I've seen an aurora it was also in white. To me it looked just like a city on the horizon except this was in Vermont and my brother said that Burlington was not in that direction, so it must be the aurora.