Daily Images and Forecasts These web sites provide day by day glimpses from space of the auroral activity in the northern hemisphere. Search the archives for major 'auroral storms' and create your own movie showing how storms begin, evolve, and end
				POLAR Ultraviolet Imager. The POLAR satellite produces images of the Earth's north polar region every 10 minutes, and you can visit this site to see just how active the northern hemisphere auroral regions are today. Just click on the day number file to bring up the list of GIFs produced every 5-10 minutes throughput the day. You can use them to track the evolution of an auroral storm!
				The POLAR Visible light Imaging System. This resource shows what aurora look like from space in the visible wavelength band. The 'Current Global Image' is quite spectacular. You can also visit the archive of previous daily images so you can study how aurora change from hour to hour.
				The POLAR Ionosphere X-ray Imaging Experiment You can select daily images and even a movie showing what aurora look like as seen in the X-ray part of the electromagnetic spectrum! You can also view the thumbnail images in a month-by-month tableau to see how the X-ray light rom aurora change from day to day. Frames required
				Hourly Auroral Activity report The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) and NASA POLAR satellite program have produced this web site which features a summary of world-wide auroral activity updated every hour.
				Dynamics Explorer Satellite The Dynamics Explorer Satellite Auroral Imaging System obtained images of the auroral zone from space in the so-called vacuum-ultraviolet band. Click on 1989 and follow the link to the images for days 71-73 to see the major auroral storm event of March 13-15, 1989 which blacked-out northeastern Canada!
				Radio Propagation Map This unusual resource is updated every 30 minutes, and features a map of the globe which shows many features that influence long-distance radio communication. In adition to the location of the current day-night terminator, and the location where the the Sun is directly overhead, it also shows as a green line the location of the Polar Auroral Oval. The map contours give the maximum frequency in megacycles for which a radio signal can travel a distance of 3,000 kilometers.
				Auroral Forecasting Center Are you planning a trip to Canada, Alaska or Scandinavia? Why not visit this University of Alasks site to check up on whether a beautiful auroral display is likely to occur? You can also visit the POLAR UVI or VIS web sites above to check on the strength of the famous 'auroral oval' and over which countries it is located to create your own local forecast from direct NASA images today! Frames required.
				Auroral Photography It is hard not to marvel at the beauty of aurora as seen from the ground, and these photographs show the great variety of auroral forms that are possible. Also, thanks to the space program, we can marvel at photographs of aurora from space showing how they are linked together into collosal phenomena thousands of kilometers across, and caress the world like a colorful diamond ring.
				Photographs of Aurora From the ground, aurora have always been breath-taking. It is this view that humans have shared and carried in their minds and folklores down throgh the millenia. At these web sites, you can visit a professional photographer's web site to see 40-50 photographs of recent, spectacular auroral displays that were captured with a simple 35-mm camera!
				The Aurora Page If you want to see photographs of aurora taken from spacecraft, this site features 8 of the 'stock' photos you may have seen in textbooks and on posters!
				Auroral Sounds Can humans actually hear aurora? Those ghostly fires that burn in the sky should certainly sounds like crackling campfires or the etheral waves of water crashing upon a celestial shore. These web sites tell this story and weigh many possible scientific theories that have tried to explain the perplexing impossibility of sound waves produced by aurora. Since the dawn of long-distance radio communication, radio operators have also reported another type of sound, produced by electrons moving in the magnetic field of the earth. When the electromagnetic waves are detected by a radio receiver, instead of static you often hear whistles and peculiar hisses. These sites discuss both phenomena, and even provide sound files to explore the radio sounds in detail.
				Legends and Theories This web site in Sweden provides some background material on this very unusual and controvercial subject. It also provides detailed discussions of the conditions that favor hearing aurora, and a list of the most popular scientific theories that attempt to explain this phenomenon.
				A New Theory Although scientists have made many attempts to record these sounds, they have failed. But, there is a possible way in which aurora can make sounds you can hear. This essay from a site from the University of Newcastle, Australia, describes how it might be done!
				A Gallery of Sounds Although auroral sounds have never been recorded, here is a link to the POLAR Plasma Wave Instrument archive of eight .WAV and AIFF files of the sounds that the Earth itself makes which are every bit as unusual.
				Even More Sounds Here are 23 more sounds produced by auroral, very low frequency (VLF) and extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic emissions. Again, these are not acoustic, auroral sounds like the ones some humans claim to hear, but could you imagine what people would have thought if these whistles, choruses and hisses could be plainly heard?