Aurora planning tools
Answer
Tonight
Live OVATION cells, tonight's darkness and NWS cloud.
- Aurora chance at my locationWhat is the aurora chance at my exact location right now?The live NOAA OVATION cell for your coordinates, whether it is dark, and NWS cloud for US points. Three inputs, no combined score.Live, ComputedLocation, time zone
- Live auroral oval mapWhere is the auroral oval right now?Every OVATION grid cell at 1 percent or more, drawn on a polar map with coastlines, dipole rings and the 10 Glow places.LiveHemisphere
- How far south is the aurora tonightHow far south is the aurora tonight?The equatorward edge of the live OVATION grid at 10, 30 or 50 percent, by longitude and by sector, with the SWPC 1000 km viewing line.Live, CitedThreshold
- Distance to the auroraHow far am I from the aurora?Great-circle distance and compass bearing to the nearest live OVATION cell at 10, 30 and 50 percent, compared with SWPC's 1000 km.Live, CitedLocation
- Cloud cover during tonight's dark hoursWill it be cloudy during tonight's dark hours?NWS gridpoint skyCover for every interval inside tonight's civil night, aligned under the darkness timeline. US coordinates only.Live, ComputedLocation, time zone
- Dark hours calculatorIs it dark enough, and for how long?Civil, nautical and astronomical night for any place and date, plus the dark minutes inside the 10 PM to 2 AM window.Computed, CitedLocation, date, time zone
- Solar midnight and darkest timeWhat time is solar midnight here?The clock time of the sun's lowest point, its altitude, and how far it sits from clock midnight and the 10 PM to 2 AM window.Computed, CitedLocation, date, time zone
This month
Darkness and moon for the coming nights, no activity forecast.
- Aurora moon plannerWhen is the moon out of the way this month?A month calendar of moon phase, illumination and moon-free dark hours per night, with new and full moon dates.Computed, CitedLocation, month, time zone
- Best nights this monthWhich nights this month are best, ignoring solar activity?The next 30 nights ranked by minutes that are dark and moon-free inside SWPC's 10 PM to 2 AM window.Computed, CitedLocation, time zone
- Aurora season finderWhen does aurora season start and end where I live?A full-year night ribbon for your coordinates, the no-darkness season, and the dates with at least 4 hours of civil night in the evening.Computed, CitedLocation, time zone
- Best month for my townWhich month is best for aurora where I live?Civil night on the 15th of each month times the clear share of the sky from NASA POWER, with the GFZ Kp record for your level.Computed, CitedLocation
Where and when
Geomagnetic latitude, storm levels and the dark season.
- Geomagnetic latitude calculatorWhat is my geomagnetic latitude?Centered dipole latitude and longitude from the IGRF-14 coefficients published by NOAA NCEI, compared with the 10 Glow places.Computed, CitedLocation
- What Kp or storm level reaches meWhich storm level typically reaches my geomagnetic latitude?Your dipole latitude mapped onto the SWPC G-scale (Kp 5 to 9), with how often SWPC says each level occurs per solar cycle.Computed, CitedLocation
- Storm reach at my locationHow often has activity been high enough for my location?Days per year since 1932 when the GFZ Kp reached the level that puts the average oval edge over your geomagnetic latitude.Computed, CitedLocation
- Towns under the oval at a KpWhich towns sit under the oval at a given Kp?Pick a Kp from 0 to 9 and see how many Glow towns sit at or poleward of SWPC's average oval edge, by country, with the towns right at the edge.Computed, CitedKp
- Compare two aurora destinationsFairbanks or Yellowknife, Tromsø or Reykjavik?Two Glow places side by side: dipole latitude, storm level, monthly dark hours, no-darkness dates, moon-free hours and the live cell.Computed, Live, CitedTwo places
Why there is no single aurora score
Some aurora apps multiply activity, cloud and darkness into one number. Glow does not, and the reason is practical. The inputs come from different sources, on different clocks, and fail in different ways. A single score hides which input is missing.
Take two nights. On the first, the OVATION cell over your town reads 40% and NWS forecasts 100% sky cover. On the second, the cell reads 0% under a clear, dark sky. A combined score could rate both nights as poor. Both are poor for you tonight, for opposite reasons, and they call for opposite plans: the first says drive to a clear patch, the second says wait for activity.
Scores also need weights, and weights need a source. No NOAA product says how many percent of cloud cancel how many percent of OVATION. Any weight Glow picked would be invented, and every page on this site follows one rule: a figure is computed from a named input with its timestamp, or quoted from an official source with a verified date.
So each tool shows its inputs side by side, as logbook rows, with the source and time beside each value. The chance tool is the closest thing to a summary: three rows for one location, read in order. Darkness first, because without it nothing else matters. Then the OVATION cell and its mode. Then cloud, where NWS covers it.
Missing data stays missing. When the NOAA feed is older than 2 hours, the live tools show nothing rather than an old oval. When NWS does not cover a point, the cloud row says so rather than borrowing another model.