loading . . . ## Last night’s aurora was great but beware of AI
Last night’s aurora was unusually strong and visible well outside its typical range. Reports and images circulated from across much of the continental United States, with some cameras capturing faint aurora as far south as Alabama. While naked-eye visibility at those latitudes was limited or nonexistent for most observers, the geographic extent of the event itself was real and consistent with a major geomagnetic storm.
During strong solar storms, energetic particles from the Sun interact with Earth’s magnetic field, causing the auroral oval to expand southward. This allows aurora to occur at lower latitudes than usual. Near the southern edge of the expanded oval, the aurora is typically faint and often below the threshold of human vision.
> _Ingalls Weather thanks the support it gets from donors. Please consider making a small donation _at this link _ to help me pay for the website and access to premium weather data._
Modern cameras are significantly more sensitive to low light than the human eye. Long exposure times allow cameras to collect light over several seconds, revealing structure and color that cannot be seen in real time. As a result, aurora that appears invisible or gray to an observer may show up in photographs as weak green or red bands.
In May 2024, I was able to observe the northern lights vividly with my family from a gravel parking lot south of Kennewick, Washington. The lights were directly overhead and we were able to watch it swirl and change in real time. This is the strongest display I have ever seen and we were surprised that it was so strong and that it changed so quickly.
Type your email…
Subscribe
My family silhouetted by the aurora outside Kennewick, Washington in May 2024.
During this period, our cameras depicted bright greens and pinks but to the naked eye it was gray with a hint of green at best even though it was bright enough to cast faint shadows. We weren’t able to see any pinks or reds at all except in our cameras.
This difference between what the eye sees and what a camera records has always existed, but it has become more noticeable as smartphone and mirrorless camera sensors have improved. Many images shared during last night’s event accurately reflect what the camera recorded, even if the photographer did not see the same detail while standing outside.
Separating real aurora images from artificial ones also requires looking at context rather than intensity alone. Camera-only visibility at southern latitudes during a major storm is physically plausible. Bright overhead aurora visible to the naked eye in the same locations would not be. Real images from a given event also tend to show similar colors, orientations, and timing across many independent observers.
AI-generated aurora often fails the context test in urban settings. Images showing vivid aurora over the downtown cores of cities like Seattle or Denver are a common example. During strong storms, aurora can in fact appear overhead at these latitudes, including during last night’s event. The issue is not position in the sky, but brightness and contrast.
Dense light pollution dramatically reduces what can be seen with the naked eye. Even when aurora is present overhead, city lights wash out faint structure and color, leaving only subtle glows or weak bands, often visible mainly to cameras. AI images frequently ignore this limitation, showing bright, sharply defined aurora cutting through illuminated skylines in ways that do not match real observing conditions.
This same problem appears in AI images set over dark landscapes. While rural skies improve visibility, artificial images still tend to exaggerate color saturation and fine structure. Swirls, sharp rays, and high-contrast textures spread across the entire sky are far more detailed than what is typically visible during most real events, especially near the southern edge of auroral activity.
Real aurora near these latitudes is usually smoother and less structured, with gradual changes rather than intricate patterns. Cameras can reveal more detail than the eye, but even long exposures rarely capture the kind of complex, uniform motion and intensity that appears in many generated images.
Aurora occurs when charged particles from the Sun are guided by Earth’s magnetic field toward the upper atmosphere. These particles collide with oxygen and nitrogen atoms at high altitude, causing them to emit light. Oxygen produces green and red aurora, while nitrogen contributes blue and purple tones.
The particles responsible for aurora are often released during solar flares and coronal mass ejections. A solar flare is a sudden release of energy from the Sun’s magnetic field, while a coronal mass ejection involves large amounts of charged particles being expelled into space. When these particles reach Earth and interact strongly with the magnetic field, geomagnetic storms occur and aurora becomes more widespread.
The strength of a geomagnetic storm determines how far from the poles aurora can appear. During major storms, the region of interaction expands and aurora can be detected far to the south. Even then, intensity decreases rapidly with latitude, which is why subtle, uneven displays are common near the edge of visibility.
Framing last night’s storm within these limits helps separate real observations from unrealistic imagery. The aurora was widespread and, in some places, overhead, but its brightness and structure were constrained by both physics and local observing conditions. Those constraints are often absent in artificial images, which replace the sky’s natural subtlety with something far more dramatic.
_The featured image is an AI generated “picture” of a vivid aurora display over downtown Seattle. The original image didn’t even have any northern lights in it and can be found at this link. (Wikimedia/InSapphoWeTrust)_
#Weather #SpaceWeather #aurora #AI https://ingallswx.com/2026/01/20/last-nights-aurora-was-great-but-beware-of-ai/
