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From Observatories: CANOPUS

The Canadian Space Agency obtains and processes data on the aurora through CANOPUS (Canadian Auroral Network for the OPEN Program Unified Study). Using a variety of instruments at several different locations in Canada , CANOPUS can identify the location and strength of the aurora throughout the Northern Hemisphere in near real-time. These instruments provide ground observations of magnetic field variations and optical and radar observations of aurora. These observations have played a central part in building our understanding of the magnetosphere.

You can easily see where the aurora is likely to be seen from the CANOPUS Real Time Auroral Oval image. An image will look like the one below.

The circle at the right of the image shows a map of Earth from the North Pole. The water is blue and land is gold. In this sample image the aurora is the green ‘circle’ around the North Pole. The color bar to the left of the map shows that green indicates the least auroral activity. Bright yellow and white indicate the highest activity. The RISK plot and the Twenty-four hour activity plot may also be useful. The Risk plot indicates the risk of a large event. An explanation is available at the bottom of the image page. The plot on the bottom uses the same color scale as the map and it gives the latitudes of the auroral oval. A latitude of ninety degrees is at the North Pole and a latitude of fifty degrees is in southern Canada .

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