Pictures from an all-sky camera with hourly resolution from the light observatory at Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, Norway (complete year 2017)

UiT The Arctic University of Norway (UiT) and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) established a light observatory at Kings Bay, Ny-Ålesund (Svalbard, Norway) in January 2017. The observatory consists of a range of light sensors including an all sky camera. It is located outside the settlement of Ny-Ålesund, approximately 1 km N-NW of the airport towards Brandalspynten. The array of sensors, including the camera, is mounted on a tripod under a transparent dome. This dataset contains the pictures taken during 2017 at hourly intervals by the all-sky-camera. The camera (Canon EOS 5D Mark III) is equipped with a fish-eye lens with a focal length set to 8 mm with aperture manually set to open (f/4) to ensure maximum sensitivity (Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L), providing a 180° image of the atmosphere (only possible with a full-size sensor). Both shutter speed (exposure time, ranging from 0.000125 to 30 seconds) and ISO (sensitivity, ranging from 100 at Midnight Sun period and up to 6400 during Polar Night) are set to auto. White balance manually set to “day light”. It is remotely controlled by a PC, pictures were stored in a cloud storage. Short gaps in the time series are due to power failures. In this dataset there is one larger gap: 2017-01-19 to 2017-01-21 caused by a crash of the controlling PC which was not monitored at that time. The pictures were primarily intended as a visual quality control of the data from the light sensors (obstructions on the dome, light pollution), but have also been used as a highly sensitive light sensor of its own by extracting data from each picture. Light data from the sensor array is also available on NIRD.