Forecasting the Northern Lights! 3: Data Sources, Apps, Groups, Resources

Welcome to part 3 of my #aurora forecasting series! #NorthernLights
Although we are deep into solar minimum, Solar Cycle 25 is now getting well under way with recent activity like an M-class flare, the first of it's kind in a few years but not a terribly impressive event compared to what's possible. So now is a great time to learn about what to expect as we approach solar maximum, and where to get data!
SOHO today is primarily valued for its coronagraph. which allows us to see solar storms leaving the suns atomosphere, the corona. And does so from the perspective of earth and just inside earth's orbit around the sun.

SDO and SOHO are both valued for monitoring sunspots, solar flares, coronal holes, and magnetic complexity of sunspots which is a topic I'll cover more in a later episodes.

GOES Weather satellites give us X-Ray intensities for measuring the intensity of solar flares and energetic particles interacting within earth's immediate neighborhood.

and finally ACE and DISCVR provide us with Solar wind data as it approaches Earth including it's speed, velocity, density and magnetic polarity

With information combined from each of these important spacecraft, we can make short, medium and even long range forecasts of when Northern Lights and other #spaceweather phenomena might happen here on Earth.
But we have another tool available to make forecasts even better.

Next we have STEREO A and STEREO B. Or, well just STEREO A.
A for Ahead and B for Behind.

Currently STEREO A, or ahead, has actually lapped around the suns orbit and currently views the side of the sun that was originally monitored by STEREO B. In other words, at least for the next several years, we can still see the incoming side of the suns disc, where new sunspots and coronal holes will eventually emerge and later be visible from earth.

The Space Weather prediction Center in Boulder Colorado is where multiple interested groups are provided free realtime spaceweather information and forecasts that might affect anything from radio communications to the power grid. Specific alerts and forecasts are made for all sorts of possible conditions, and one of those use cases is Aurora.
So the first go for data and images is the Spaceweather Prediction center website. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/space-weather-enthusiasts
Specifically the space weather enthusiast's dashboard Where ACE, GOES X-RAY, and SOHO's coronagraph are right there to view.

And now it's time to talk about OVATION! Ovation is a model that takes data from ACE, DSCVR, other satellites and ground observations, and then produces a really neat graphic that roughly approximates where northern and southern lights may be visible on earth over the next 30 minutes or so. Now OVATION is nice but it isn't perfect. For one it might lead some people to believe this is too literal. The Auroral oval doesn't look exactly like this and the colors only represent probability of aurora, not what the aurora itself looks like or where it will be. And seeing the original source data is still better in my opinion, but OVATION is a great way to get a feel for how current solar wind parameters relate to what we can expect for Aurora and for that, I think it's a great tool to get started with and learn on.

Now SWPC's site is pretty good, but what if you want some more bloggy style explanations and news to spice things up?
That's where spaceweather.com comes in. Daily information about everything spaceweather including things like meteor showers, or rare events like sprites, news, user submitted pictures and musings about Northern lights from all over the world. Shameless plug, I've even had my work featured on this site several times. And right there on the website's home page are links to the some of the same data viewable on the SWPC page.

Speaking of Facebook, there are Aurora communities on facebook you can join but my favorite for here in North America is the Great Lakes Aurora Hunters page. The photographs, skills, artwork, and even cookies coming from this page just blow my mind. There are other groups based in other countries but you'd be hard pressed to find a more active, dedicated or supportive group of aurora enthusiasts than this one.

Now there's quite a few aurora forecasting tools and spaceweather monitoring apps on the google and apple stores and I encourage you to test drive any of them. But the one I prefer is Aurora Alerts. for a few dollars you can get lifetime alerts for pretty much whatever you want to know. For example you can set a threshold for solar wind speed or the latest Kp Index, set the times you might want to see those alerts. You can even set locations for family members for example and let THEM know if northern lights might be visible for THEM. Its really a handy tool.
The apps leave it to you to interpret the data, even interpret the alerts themselves and determine for yourself when and where to look.

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