Why are most aurora videos i see on the internet in time lapse

why dont they just use normal speed?

Auroras are very dim, and so each individual frame of video takes significantly longer to record them than the nominal 1/30 sec frame rate of video cameras. If the cameras were running in real time, even with fast lenses and CCD, you'd just get black images. So a speed up of the aurora is the price you pay for recording it at all.

I've never tried videoing an aurora, but I found that just to photograph normal naked eye constellations on high-speed colour film required an exposure of about 10 seconds at f/2. So any video based on this exposure would be speeded up by a factor of 300x.

Thanks for the link. I didn't know I was on CBSnews.com. I write these articles for Space.com, and then they syndicate them out to other news sites, and I never find out except by accident.

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do you mean aurora Borealis (northern lights), aurora (the secret military airplane), or the atmosphere around the sun?
with the aurora Borealis because it happens very slowly, it makes it more interesting. it would make a better picture than video without the time lapse

you've obviously never actually seen an aurora...

Because most auroras are slow moving. They look better in high speed.

Because it's really slow.