The beauty of the Northern Lights has long been a secret of the arctic regions. The very best aurora borealis viewing is in the Canadian Northwest Territories, near the magnetic north pole. Some call it the greatest light show on earth. However, to see it, you had to brave bitterly cold temperatures in the dead of night, preferably in the depths of winter.
Thanks to AuroraMAX, you can now view the Northern Lights online from the comfort of your own home. A large network of live high quality webcams will watch the skies on your behalf. The site will even let you know by email when the viewing of the Northern Lights is especially good.
The Northern Lights happen when the solar wind meets Earth’s upper atmosphere. All the tiny collisions between charged particles release energy, which you can normally see as green or red light only if you are inside the circumpolar auroral oval. These atoms and molecules are constantly moving, which causes the Northern Lights to ripple and dance across the sky. This marvel of nature is regular night time viewing for people in the far north.
The website gives a live feed after dusk, Yellowknife time. During daylight hours, stored images from the gallery are changed every ten seconds. During off-days, you can browse AuroraMAX’s extensive gallery of previous aurora borealis videos by date, or you can go straight to the Top Ten featured videos. The most riveting images seen by the AuroraMAX webcams are available as wallpaper, which you can download here. You can also check out the nightly auroral forecast at AuroraMAX’s sister page, Astronomy North.
AuroraMAX is a five year educational and public outreach initiative led by space physicist Eric Donavan of the University of Calgary. The University of Calgary is also providing technical support. The website is hosted by the Government of Canada.
The project is called AuroraMAX because it is planned to continue during the peak years of the upcoming solar maximum, when the solar wind is at its strongest and the aurora borealis is most beautiful. As part of Canada’s contribution to NASA’s THEMIS mission to study the aurora borealis, this joint collaboration by the Canadian Space Agency, the City of Yellowknife, and Astronomy North will seek to obtain some of the highest quality pictures of the Northern Lights ever. And they’ll all be online, right at your fingertips.
Time is running out to see the very best Northern Lights of a lifetime. The next solar maximum is due in 2013. With AuroraMAX, you don’t have to miss a minute of it.
