Excited to try to see the Northern Lights around Seattle but clouds or a weak show going to prevent it?

Just head online.

The Canadian Space Agency came up with a novel idea two years ago to put an aurora web camera in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories not only to give everyone a front seat to one of the best places to watch the Northern Lights, but take some time lapse video to really show off nature's beauty.

The project was launched on Sept. 20 and is a five-year educational program designed to raise awareness of the science of the Northern Lights. It's partnership between the University of Calgary, the city of Yellowknife, Astronomy North and the Canadian Space Agency.

They wanted to get this set up before the anticipated solar sun spot maximum in 2013 -- sun spots go on an 11-year cycle and we are just coming off quite a minimum in 2008-09. Sun spots create geomagnetic storms which in turn, put on dazzling aurora displays.

Here are some important links:

• Aurora Max Main Page
• Live Camera (Only on when dark)
• Aurora Forecast
• Gallery Replay
• Aurora Max Twitter Feed (@auroramax) -- with live play-by-play Tweets when storms are visible. They also give an activity rating and you can see the chart of what those numbers translate too here.

You can see the previous night's display here and if you read this in time, the display on March 13 was amazing -- starting around midnight their time.

A solar storm was expected to bring another aurora display Tuesday night so take a peek at the cam around 9-11 p.m. Seattle time.

More Information:

Wired.com article on the AuroraMax Project