Northern Lights Cams in Tromsø & Norway

Two very different Norways

The cameras on this page split into two groups, and they need very different conditions:

So on an ordinary night, watch the north. When the storm banner at the top of this page appears, NOAA expects Kp 5 or more, and the southern cameras become worth checking too.

The cameras

• Lyngen North is a dedicated aurora camera at a glass-igloo hotel on Lyngen fjord. Its on-screen panel shows the camera’s compass direction, the sun’s altitude, the moon’s brightness and the latest solar-wind reading from the DSCOVR satellite, which makes it a good teaching camera as well as a sky view.
• Nordkjosbotn looks east from Smørpundfjellet at the head of Balsfjord, about an hour inland from Tromsø. Inland valleys are often clear when the coast is under cloud.
• Tromsø harbour is the port authority’s live video over the city-centre waterfront, and Tromsø is a city camera on Windy’s network, a snapshot every few minutes. Neither is a dark-sky camera, but together they answer the question most visitors to Tromsø actually have: is it showing over town tonight?
• Finse on the Hardangervidda plateau is the darkest of the southern cameras; Hamar and Oslo are for storm nights.

When to watch

Season: from about the start of September to late March in Tromsø. The midnight sun runs from about 20 May to 22 July there, and the nights stay too light for aurora from early May to mid-August. Polar night, when the sun does not rise, runs from about 27 November to 15 January, so aurora can appear in the afternoon.

Time of night: magnetic midnight in northern Norway is around 22:00–23:30 local time in winter; the busiest stretch is usually 21:00–01:00, with bursts that last minutes.

Where to watch around Tromsø

In town, Telegrafbukta beach and Prestvannet lake are dark enough for a good display, and the Fjellheisen cable car lifts you above the streetlights. For a darker sky, drive west onto Kvaløya (Ersfjordbotn and the beaches at Sommarøy) or east into the Lyngen Alps. When the coast is cloudy, the most-used escape is inland, south-east through Skibotn valley toward the Finnish border, which sits in a rain shadow and is often clear. Further afield, Senja, Alta (which calls itself the town of the northern lights) and the beaches of Lofoten are classic spots.

The coast makes its own weather

Northern Norway’s coast is mild for its latitude because of the Gulf Stream, and that brings cloud and showers off the sea. Kp matters less than the gaps between weather systems. Watch the cloud figure on each camera above, and the Norwegian Meteorological Institute’s cloud forecast on yr.no, before deciding where to drive.