AURORAL FRIENDS

From Observatories: All-Sky Cameras

Live Data

Canada and Alaska

The South Pole All-Sky Imager Project

A complete list of real-time data links is located in the Space Weather Resources section.

These ground-based observatories are using “auroracams” or all-sky cameras. The all-sky camera provides a circular image from horizon to horizon. The center of the circle is directly overhead. This image shows an example from the South Pole all-sky imager.

An example from the South Pole all-sky imager

Of course, observatories in the north are not recording during the summer months when the long hours of sunlight make it impossible to see auroras. The ‘aurora season’ in the northern hemisphere is generally from September to April. The reverse is true in the southern hemisphere where summer and long hours of sunlight prevent good auroral viewing from roughly November through February. Since auroras are almost symmetrical in the north and south, you can choose northern observatories from September to April and southern observatories from March to October.

Canada and Alaska

The THEMIS All-Sky cameras, based here on Earth, take images and movies of the Northern Lights by looking up into the sky from horizon to horizon. The cameras take images and movies in black and white, gathering all the visible light from the aurora that they can. In this way, they can record even very faint aurora that our eyes cannot see. These cameras are placed in 20 locations, spread out across Canada and Alaska where the Northern Lights are most likely to be seen. These cameras and a network of ground-based magnetometers provide important information that will be correlated with the five satellites of the NASA THEMIS mission. The all-sky cameras are part of collaboration between NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the University of Calgary.

The South Pole All-Sky Imager Project

The Japanese National Institute of Polar Research provide near real-time images of the aurora from the South Pole during the southern aurora season.