Welcome to KHO ...
Home of The Aurora Forecast 3D app
StatusSummer season (05 May 2021)
RoadClosed by snow
RepairsSmall entrance port blocked by new doors!
GarageBeltwagen ready for action
BandwagonParked in Garage Mine 7
Sky colors
May 05, 2021
Version 7.4 of the Aurora Forecast 3D app is now released and reviewed by Apple and Google. It includes the Perez model for sky illuminance that simulates clear sky color conditions as a function of solar position - observed from any ground position on the planet. It runs stable on all platforms with less than 1 second background execution.
High HSI compression ratio
Mars 24, 2021
Erasmu+ Trainee Adrienne Esmeralda Oudijk has published her work on Hyper Spectral Imaging (HSI) compression. The spectral data cube is compressed by a factor of 10-5 with minimum loss of spatial resolution and spectral signature.
See IEEE Whispers paper and video presentation.
Pulsating aurora and O3?
Mars 12, 2021
Our PhD candidate Fasil Tesema Kebede has published work on how high energetic electron precipitation causing pulsating aurora may affect upper atmospheric chemistry and ozone destruction.
More details here.
Space Hurricane!
February 22, 2021
Our very own Director Prof. Jøran Idar Moen and Adjunct Prof. Kjellmar Oksavik at UNIS have together with an international team discovered a polar ionospheric Space Hurricane, which is published in Nature. This discovery sheds new light on how Earth is coupled to space.
Link to paper here.
Doctora K. Herlingshaw!
January 18, 2021
Salute! Katie Herlingshaw has defended her PhD thesis titled: "Characterising Mesoscale Fast Flow Channels in the Polar Cap Ionosphere" The defense was on Friday 22nd of January 2021.

Read thesis here.

Video trip!
January 15, 2021
Do you want to see the inside of KHO? Join Head engineer Mikko Syrjäsuo, and PhD students Katie Herlingshaw and Nina Kristine Eriksen on a video trip through the observatory.
Watch Youtube video.
Aurora Forecast 3D Demo
January 30, 2021
The Aurora Forecast 3D is a tool to track down where the aurora is located in the sky from any location on planet. It renders Earth in 3D with rotation and scaling at your fingertips. This video demonstrates the app.
Watch Youtube video.
Day/Nightside aurora?
December 29, 2020
Our very own Professor Dag Lorentzen explains the difference between dayside and nightside aurora. This article was also published in the local news paper Svalbardposten. See norwegian translation here.
Read english version here.
Master Lidia Luque!
December 2020
Congratulation to Master Lidia Luque! She investigated ionospheric signatures of energy input and turbulence in the polar ionosphere using the spectral width parameter measured by the SuperDARN radar (which been used as a proxy for ionospheric turbulence). Lidia examined specific cases of high spectral width and linked them to signatures of energy input into the polar ionosphere using the EISCAT radar and KHO optics. Read thesis here.
BACC #5 operational!
December 18, 2020
We are very happy to welcome the Tromsø Geophysical Observatory (TGO) at UiT The Arctic University of Norway to join the Boreal Aurora Camera Constellation (BACC) with camera number 5. It is installed and on-line today at the old Skibotn Observatory.

View quick look here.
Interactive app
December 10, 2020
Version 6.9 of the Aurora Forecast 3D app now includes detailed target identification. Star constellation, planet, satellite and location information are linked to the Web. The main purpose is to create an interactive learning experience.

Computer downloads here.
Webmaster: F. Sigernes