This project was realized at the
InnoVis research group, University of Calgary.

The Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights is a phenomenon that has fascinated people throughout history. The AuroraMAX outreach initiative provides a collection of time-lapse videos of the night sky captured by a camera at Yellowknife in Canada. We present an interactive visualization of this AuroraMAX image data on a large touch display. Our visualization slices each time-lapse video to represent an entire night as a single image or keogram, provides different views on the keograms, and allows people to explore and compare nights to discover interesting patterns. To entice people to interact, we use proxemic interaction and animate the visualization in response to people’s movements in front of the display. We deployed the visualization in a public space at an art-science festival. Initial findings suggest that the proxemic interaction aspect helps to draw people in and that the visualization generates interest from passersby, providing opportunities for science outreach.

Start Demo

AuroraVis Preview

Related Publications

  • Slicing the Aurora: An Immersive Proxemics-Aware Visualization.

    Lay, S.; Vermeulen, J.; Perin, C.; Donovan, E.; Dachselt, R.; Carpendale, S.;

    In ISS 2016 Workshop Immersive Analytics: Exploring Future Interaction and Visualization Technologies for Data Analytics.ISS '16, Niagara Falls, ON, Canada.ACM,2016.

    @inproceedings{,
       author = {Sebastian Lay and Jo Vermeulen and Charles Perin and Eric Donovan and Raimund Dachselt and Sheelagh Carpendale},
       title = {Slicing the Aurora: An Immersive Proxemics-Aware Visualization},
       booktitle = {ISS 2016 Workshop Immersive Analytics: Exploring Future Interaction and Visualization Technologies for Data Analytics},
       year = {2016},
       month = {11},
       location = {Niagara Falls, ON, Canada},
       numpages = {7},
       publisher = {ACM},
       keywords = {Information visualization, proxemic interaction, aurora borealis, interactive surfaces, large displays}
    }

  • Slicing the Aurora.

    Lay, S.; Vermeulen, J.; Perin, C.; Donovan, E.; Dachselt, R.; Carpendale, S.;

    In Exhibit, IEEE VIS 2016 Arts Program (VISAP'16 Metamorphoses).2016.

    @inproceedings{Lay2016aa,
       author = {Sebastian Lay and Jo Vermeulen and Charles Perin and Eric Donovan and Raimund Dachselt and Sheelagh Carpendale},
       title = {Slicing the Aurora},
       booktitle = {Exhibit, IEEE VIS 2016 Arts Program (VISAP'16 Metamorphoses)},
       year = {2016},
       month = {5},
       numpages = {3}
    }