Fairbanks Aurora Camera

Fairbanks, in Alaska's interior, sits directly beneath the auroral oval — the ring around the magnetic pole where the northern lights appear most often — which makes it one of the premier aurora-viewing destinations anywhere. This camera points at the northern sky, and on clear, dark nights through aurora season the display can fill the whole frame with shifting green, and during strong storms, red and purple. Aurora season in Fairbanks runs from late August to mid-April, when the nights are long enough to go fully dark. The interior's cold, dry, stable winter air also means lots of clear skies — Fairbanks averages aurora on a majority of dark, clear nights in season. Prime time is usually 10 PM to 3 AM Alaska time (two hours behind Hawaii). Watch the Kp index and the local cloud cover; the aurora itself is often visible even when activity is "moderate" this far north. In summer Fairbanks swings the other way into near-constant daylight around the solstice. The city is the gateway to the Arctic — the start of the Dalton Highway to the oil fields, jump-off for Gates of the Arctic and the Brooks Range — and home to the University of Alaska Fairbanks, whose Geophysical Institute runs the widely used aurora forecast.