Eli5- How did my phone camera capture the northern lights

332 viewsOtherPlanetary Science

I read on Facebook to take a picture of the sky in my town even if it looked like nothing to the naked eye. Sure enough the picture was a gorgeous picture of the northern lights- bright purples and greens. It looked like just a dark sky when I looked up. How did my phone get a picture of that when I couldn’t see it?

In: Planetary Science

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Many CCD cameras can adjust their “shutter speed”. Meaning they slow the readout rate of the array and during the longer times between read outs, the charge storage capacitors can integrate small amounts to larger amounts before reading the array out. Thereby “seeing” in much lower light than our eyes can.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge-coupled_device](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge-coupled_device)

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