Northern Skies will be a national and international venue for learning about and participating in research on the Aurora Borealis. The Aurora is a fundamental feature of the northern night sky and figures prominently in northern art and the oral histories of northern peoples. The Aurora provides a window into the interactions between the Sun, the space surrounding the Earth, and the Earth’s upper atmosphere — a focus for fundamental research in space physics. 

AINA has partnered with the University of Calgary’s Space Physics program to develop an interactive, online citizen science program to study the Aurora using images from the Auroral Geospace Observatory (AGO) and the Institute for Space Imaging Science. In tandem we are developing an interactive, online museum of art, literature and legends to bring the science, culture and the Aurora together and accessible to any and all who are interested. Northern Skies will be an ongoing program that will engage a new research community, a new set of funders and a broad general public in the activities of the Arctic Institute, and the University of Calgary. 

Auroral Zone

The Auroral Zone citizen science website launched on August 13, 2015 at the Telus Spark's Adults Only Night. Over 300 people came by to try out the website, learn how to classify images of the aurora, and chat with scientists from the Auroral Imaging Group at the University of Calgary.