WebGL · 2026
Northern Lights Live
The aurora over Tromsø, live in the browser - a WebGL sky that moves with the magnetometer readings, minute by minute.
- Client
- Tromsø Sky Station
- Year
- 2026
- Role
- Concept, WebGL, sound
- Stack
- WebGL, GLSL, Web Audio
The brief
The station streamed its magnetometer data as a table nobody read. They wanted people who will never stand under the aurora to feel when it starts.
What I did
A shader that turns the readings into curtains of light: the stronger the storm, the faster and greener the sky. A low drone follows the field, so the page can run on a second screen all night.
The result
1.2Mvisits in the first storm week
People stayed fourteen minutes on average - most of them with the sound on. Two schools now use the sky in their physics lessons.