Northern lights tonight in Canada
Canada sits at about 69° magnetic latitude, so the aurora reaches it from roughly Kp 0.0 — most clear dark nights. The card below reads NOAA's oval, tonight's dark hours, the cloud and the Moon for Yellowknife, Northwest Territories right now.
Canada holds the oval's most favourable ground on the planet: because the magnetic pole sits over Canadian Arctic islands, Yellowknife at 62° north is 69° magnetic — deeper inside the oval than Tromsø — with a dry continental winter that gives it more clear aurora nights than anywhere in Norway. Churchill on Hudson Bay is under the oval too and is cloudier. Jasper is the southern dark-sky preserve at 60° magnetic, where a Kp 3 night shows an arc over the Athabasca valley and Kp 5 fills the sky. The Prairie provinces see aurora dozens of nights a year; the populated corridor from Toronto to Montréal needs a G2.
The oval now, pole to 40°, Canada's meridian at the bottom. Dashed: tonight's forecast Kp.
Reading NOAA…
Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
rows: dark · oval · clear · no Moon — the window is the run of green hours
Reading NOAA…
Where to go in Canada
Three sites a photographer would drive to, each with its measured ground darkness from the light pollution atlas and its own verdict for tonight. Coordinates are approximate: a viewpoint, a shore, a car park.
- Yellowknife, Northwest Territoriesreading the atlas…—Verdict at this site →
- Churchill, Manitobareading the atlas…—Verdict at this site →
- Jasper National Park, Albertareading the atlas…—Verdict at this site →
Kp now and the three nights ahead
Camera settings for this aurora
From the oval's brightness right now and the exposure law.
Bright, moving aurora smears at anything over about 4 s: open the aperture or raise ISO rather than lengthen the shutter.
Plan the sequence · stack the night when you are back · the photography guide →
Other places
Sources
Aurora grid, Kp, solar wind and alerts: NOAA SWPC, read live by your browser. Cloud: MET Norway (CC BY 4.0), which receives the site's coordinates rounded to two decimals. Ground darkness: this site's atlas. Magnetic latitude from the 2025 IGRF dipole; the Kp threshold from NOAA's viewing table.