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 E(PAR) data derived from 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 are two large gaps: 2019-01-09 to 2019-03-08 and 2019-06-24 to 2019-09-25 caused by a crash of the controlling PC which was not monitored at that time. The equations for the picture-to-E(PAR) conversion can be found in: Johnsen et al 2021, An all-sky camera system providing high temporal resolution annual time-series of irradiance in the Arctic, Applied Optics. The pictures on which this dataset is based on can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.11582/2021.00022. For re-use of the data, please refer to the dataset and the original publication.