Northern Lights View - Fairbanks, AK, USA

This camera faces the northern sky over Fairbanks, in the heart of Alaska, where green curtains of the aurora borealis ripple and dance above the dark forest on clear nights through the long winter.

Fairbanks lies just south of the Arctic Circle, and the aurora appears here on more than 200 nights a year. It forms when charged particles from the Sun crash into the gases high in Earth's atmosphere and make them glow.

The town began in August 1901 as a trading post on the Chena River, and a gold rush soon followed. Known as the Golden Heart City, it's also the coldest city of its size in the United States, with long, dark winters.

Did You Know? The coldest temperature ever recorded in Fairbanks was -66°F (-54°C), on January 14, 1934.

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