STAR 5-min Camera Photography

This dataset provides images of the sky and current surface conditions taken at the Environment Canada Weather Office in Iqaluit, NU over the duration of the STAR project. A Campbell Scientific CC680 still imaging camera took imagery taken every 5 minutes. The camera was facing north and had a direct view of the 10-m tower weather station (A3). An overnight light was installed so that conditions could be monitored during darkness, which was the normal procedure for much of the project. Data was continuously written to a compact flash card in *.jpg format. Each image was > 200 kb in size. Based on the image size, and card memory, the card reached its capacity every 5 days. Instead of letting the card fill up, the compact flash was downloaded daily, which means that for each day of data there might be one or two missing photographs in succession during the time when the card was downloaded. During the Winter Blowing Snow Project the cameras sampling resolution was adjusted so that it could be left without downloading for longer periods. Between February 24-April 10, photos were taken every 30 minutes.

Images taken with the 5-min camera have a time stamp on the actual photo. Time is in local standard, and was not adjusted for daylight savings (Nov 4 - 2:00am). Users should be aware of this when using the data files.