What’s inside the Outpost.
Everything an aurora chaser needs in one app — space weather, cloud forecasts, sighting reports, AR field tools, alerts, and a learning library. Built around how chasers actually decide whether to head out, where to go, and when.
FORECASTING & MONITORING
Six dashboard tabs covering every layer of the chase: Solar Wind (Bz, By, Bx, Bt, IMF Phi, plasma speed, density, temperature), GOES Mag (geosynchronous magnetometer), X-Ray Flux, EPAM (energetic particle ions + electrons), Geo Indices (Kp, Hp30/60, AE/AL/AU, SNAP polarity), and Ground Mag (terrestrial magnetometer). Live from NOAA SWPC and refreshed continuously.
Every plot supports time-range zooming (1H / 6H / 24H / 3D / 7D), and your chosen view persists across sessions — reopen the app and your preferred trace toggles, time range, and active tab are still there. Tap-help on every panel explains what the number means and the thresholds chasers actually care about.
Tracks every Earth-directed coronal mass ejection in the CCMC Scoreboard pipeline, with estimated arrival time, speed at L1, expected Kp impact, and a classification probability score. Cards show NASA DONKI source data, modeled arrival window, and historical context (similar speed/density profiles from past arrivals).
When a CME actually arrives, the auto-classifier reads its magnetic structure — the leading-edge Bz signature, sheath turbulence, and flux-rope orientation (Bothmer-Schwenn typing across SEN, SWN, ESW, WSE, NES, NWS, ENW, WNE). It tells you whether to expect leading-south Bz right now, trailing-south Bz hours from now, or no help at all from this particular pulse. Critical because most CMEs deliver the bulk of their southward Bz hours after first impact — you need to know if you should leave now or wait until 2 a.m.
A custom timing model trained on over 7,000 substorm events going back more than a decade. Predicts when a substorm is most likely to fire — the “go now” signal during active conditions, far more useful than just watching Kp and waiting.
Has its own dedicated tab in the app footer. Shows: probability the substorm will fire in the next N minutes, charging state of the magnetotail (early / building / loaded / overdue), confidence level (low / medium / high), and the underlying signal driving the prediction so you know why the model thinks tonight is the night. Configurable alerts trigger when probability crosses your chosen threshold.
Live X-ray flux from GOES primary + secondary satellites, with NOAA flare classification (A / B / C / M / X) and real-time alerts on M-class and above. Each significant flare gets a full card with peak time, duration, source active region (e.g., AR4419), heliographic location (e.g., N17W66), and a SDO 131Å solar disk image with a red bounding box on the active region that fired.
Toggle backward / forward through the last 7 days of M and X-class flares with the OLDER / NEWER buttons — each step swaps in the flare's data card and its SDO image with the source-region box, and highlights its dashed line on the X-ray flux plot above so you can see exactly which spike you're inspecting. Default view always lands on the most recent significant flare.
Critical context for whether a CME might follow — west-limb flares can fling material toward Earth even without obvious dimming; east-limb flares are usually duds for chasers. The bounding box tells you where to look in the SDO browse archives if you want to dig deeper.
SKY CONDITIONS
WHAT THE APP HELPS YOU FIND
High-frequency cloud cover tiles regenerated every hour: HRRR for the continental US (3km grid, hourly), OpenMeteo for everywhere else. The freshest forecast is always loaded when you open the map.
Time slider lets you scrub forward up to 18 hours to see how a clearing window will or won't materialize at your spot. Color-coded so you can read the map at a glance without squinting at percentages. Combined with the OVATION oval, it instantly answers "where will it both be aurora-visible AND clear tonight?"
Live OVATION auroral-precipitation overlay showing where the lights are predicted to be over the next 30 minutes. Color-coded by intensity (precipitation flux in mW/m²). Reads the dynamic boundary, not just the static 60° geomagnetic latitude line that most chase tools rely on.
Pair with the cloud layer for an instant "where can I actually see aurora AND have clear skies tonight" map. Toggle layers independently from the map controls panel; preferences persist across sessions.
Full-resolution Bortle scale overlay (1 = pristine dark / 9 = inner-city) so you can see at a glance whether a spot is dark enough for naked-eye aurora versus photo-only conditions. Built from VIIRS satellite radiance data.
Tap any point on the map to read the local Bortle class. Saved locations automatically pick up their bortle rating so it shows on your collection cards. Critical for chase planning at mid-latitudes where the difference between bortle 4 and bortle 7 can mean the difference between catching a faint pillar and seeing nothing.
A 30-second decision aid that consolidates everything into one card: current space-weather conditions (Bz, speed, Kp), the Substorm Scout probability, the CME queue (anything inbound or active?), local cloud forecast for tonight at your saved spots, and the moon phase + astro-darkness window. Resolves to a clear yes / maybe / no verdict so you can decide whether to commit to going out without scrubbing every dashboard.
FIELD TOOLS
Hold your phone up to the night sky in landscape mode for an augmented-reality overlay on your camera view. Uses your compass, GPS, and the live OVATION oval to render: predicted oval position as a glowing arc across the sky, compass markings with cardinal directions, magnetic-midnight countdown (substorm peak window), live Bz / solar-wind speed / Kp readouts floating in your field of view, and a camera exposure coach suggesting ISO + shutter speed for current sky conditions.
Shows you where the aurora should be even when haze, moonlight, or city glow is washing out the actual signal. Reporting a sighting from this view tags it with your exact heading + tilt for accurate community ground-truth.
SAME WETLAND · THREE SEPARATE NIGHTS · THREE DIFFERENT SHOWS
Save dark-sky spots with photos, notes, GPS coordinates, bortle class, and live cloud cover all baked into one card. Place pins directly on the map or import from your existing chase spots. Each location automatically shows current weather, sky transparency, and distance from your home.
Group locations into collections (“summer chase spots”, “north-facing horizon”, “quick drives”). Private by default. Share specific collections with friends; list individual spots publicly if you want the community to use them. Drop a sighting report from any saved location with one tap. The payoff: a single good location pays back over and over.
Three classes of camera markers across the region: 📹 general cameras (community-submitted webcams), 🔭 all-sky cameras (pointing straight up; great for verifying actual aurora visibility), and ✈ FAA airport weather cams (high-quality, regularly maintained, surprisingly good for sky conditions).
Tap any marker for a live snapshot preview + a link to the full stream. Useful for verifying clouds and aurora visibility hundreds of miles ahead of your route before committing to the drive. Updated regularly as new community-submitted cams come in.
One-tap deep-red UI that preserves dark adaptation in the field. Built with a CSS filter chain (grayscale → sepia → hue-rotate → saturate) so every surface in the app — map tiles, dashboards, photos, sighting cards, your own avatar — renders in the same uniform crimson.
No mismatch between “night mode pages” and “leaked white pages.” Tap once to enable, tap once to disable. Setting persists across the session so you don’t blow your night vision checking conditions on the drive out.
COMMUNITY
Real chasers reporting in from the field, with intensity ratings (eye / camera / pillars / corona / overhead), photos, approximate location, and current sky conditions. See what’s actually happening in the sky right now, not just what the forecast model says.
Reports are tied to where you actually are. The app captures your location via GPS (with an IP-based fallback when GPS is off), so badges and stats reflect a real chase — not a wishful map tap. Locations are rounded to ~1 km before being shared, so your exact spot stays private even though the latitude band, region, and Bortle score are accurate.
Community honesty layer: any signed-in chaser can 🚩 flag a sighting they think is suspect (with optional reason text). Flags are invisible to non-admins — the sighting still looks normal to everyone else — but admins see flagged sighting rings render in a red/pink glow on the map and a dedicated FLAGGED SIGHTINGS review queue with VIEW / DISMISS / DELETE actions. If a flagged sighting is deleted, any badges earned through it are automatically revoked. Community spotting + admin review keeps the trophy case clean.
Filter by region, intensity threshold, recency (last hour / 4 hours / night), or friends-only. Tap any sighting to see the full report and the chaser’s public profile.
Send friend requests to other chasers from their public profile. Once accepted: share location collections (your hand-picked spots) with specific friends, get a push when a friend files a sighting within range, and see them on the map during active nights. Built for chase groups who want to coordinate in real time without a million WhatsApp messages.
All opt-in. You control who sees what; nothing about your locations or activity is visible until you explicitly share it.
23 configurable push notification types across forecasting (geomagnetic storm, G-scale crossing, CME inbound, CME shock confirmed, Bz southward, solar wind speed surge, density spike, HSS arrival, X-class flare, radio blackout), aurora visibility (OVATION overhead, OVATION viewline, oval-at-my-latitude, extreme low-latitude storm, Substorm Scout imminent), nerd-tier (CPCP saturated, hemispheric power, STA proton event), and community (sighting nearby, friend sighting, friend request received).
Wake me at Kp 6+. Ping me when Bz drops below -10 nT. Alert me when a friend within 200 mi reports a sighting. Don’t bother me before sunset on weeknights. Each alert has its own threshold slider, cooldown, and quiet-hours rule. Master mute toggle for travel days. Configure once, get the right pings only.
EXAMPLE: SUBSTORM SCOUT PUSH ON A LOCKED PHONE
MY OUTPOST
Your face to the rest of the chase community. Hero banner with your favorite aurora photo, display name, the chip-style displayed badge next to your @username, your Trophy Case rendered as a single-row showcase any visiting chaser can tap to see what each badge represents, plus stats tiles at the bottom (lifetime, this year, last 30d, max G-level, etc.).
Customizable from My Outpost → PROFILE: avatar banner (drop your favorite aurora photo), display name, real name with show/hide toggle, pronouns, home region (broad band like “Mid-Atlantic” or “Pacific Northwest”), home state or Canadian province (dropdown with US states + Canadian provinces, abbreviation in option labels for quick scanning), chasing-since year, equipment / setup, bio, Instagram handle, and personal website.
Granular display controls on every public-facing field. Show or hide region. Show or hide state/province. Toggles save independently — reveal one, both, or neither in the 📍 line under your username (and in the user-search dropdown). Same per-field control on real name. Stats tiles on your profile each have their own show/hide toggle so you can pick which records you want public.
Public / Private profile with a "friends can see my private profile" override (default ON — flip to OFF for me-only mode). Private profiles still don’t appear in user search; friends just get a side-channel view. 45-day cooldown on username changes after your first free swap.
Group your saved spots into collections — themed bundles like “summer chase spots”, “north-facing horizon”, “quick drives from town”, or “dark-sky weekend trips.” Each collection holds any number of locations, and a single location can belong to multiple collections.
Private by default. Locations don’t show on the public map until you decide. Three sharing modes per collection: private (only you), shared with friends (specific accepted friends — the spots show in their map but no one else’s), and public (listed in the discovery directory for any chaser to find and join). You can also flip individual locations to public independently of their collection — useful for that one safe roadside pull-off you don’t mind broadcasting while keeping your home spot private.
Joining other chasers’ collections works the same way: browse public collections in the directory, hit JOIN, and those spots appear on your map alongside your own. Leave any time. When the owner adds, removes, or edits a location, members get the update immediately — the collection is the source of truth, not your local copy.
Search by username from the Friends inbox in My Outpost — type a name, see matching public profiles, tap one to view their stats and add them as a friend. Requests need acceptance; pending requests show up in the recipient’s inbox with ACCEPT / DENY buttons. Mutual friendship is required for shared collections to flow through.
Once friends, you can: share specific collections with them, see their sighting reports tagged in your feed (with optional “friend sighting nearby” push alerts), and view their public profile + chase stats. Sighting privacy still applies regardless of friendship — locations are rounded to ~1 km in any sharing context, so no one’s home spot leaks even to friends.
Removing a friend is a single button-tap with confirmation. No hard feelings, no permanent record. Either side can re-request later if circumstances change. Built for chase groups who want to coordinate in real time without a hundred WhatsApp threads.
Every sighting you log feeds an evolving stats page that shows your aurora-chasing history with a level of detail no other app surfaces. Until you’ve filed your first sighting, the page shows a friendly “404 — AURORA NOT FOUND” empty state pointing you to the report button.
Totals: lifetime sightings, this year, last 30 days, last 7 days, nights observed (unique nights you caught something), unique locations chased from. Records: max G-level storm caught, average Kp across all your sightings, strongest southward Bz at a sighting, average solar wind speed and density when you’ve been catching the lights, best month, best year, distant cells (~70 mi grid representing the geographic spread of your chases). Milestones: first sighting on file, latest sighting on file.
Plus interactive bar charts: by year, by month (last 24 months), by hour of night in your local time (when do you actually catch shows), by intensity rating, and by observation tags. Patterns emerge over time — you start to see your own chase rhythm and the conditions that work for your latitude and horizon.
Aurora Outpost gamifies chase reporting in a way that gives back to the community: every sighting you log is data the rest of the network uses — ground-truth for the forecast, hits on the live map, references for chasers asking “is anyone seeing it right now?”. The badge system rewards that contribution while turning chase history into something visible and proud.
The Trophy Case is its own page under My Outpost. The top is the same outlined emoji-box that shows on your public profile — what other chasers see when they tap your name. Below it, every badge in the system is grouped into collapsible category dropdowns showing your live progress toward each one: e.g. “Spring Specialist · 3 / 10” with a progress bar, ticking up the moment you log a qualifying sighting. Earned badges are stamped with the date you got them and a teal “✓ EARNED” flag.
Pick any one earned badge to display next to your username — in your hero banner, in friend rows, on sighting cards, anywhere your handle shows up. Tap a badge in the case and a confirmation popup asks “display this badge?” before applying. Change it whenever you want, but only from badges you've actually earned. Tap any chip next to a username (yours or anyone else's) and a popup pops up showing the badge name and how to earn it — so anyone can see what a badge represents without leaving context. Settings has a one-tap HIDE button that clears your displayed chip without removing the badge from your case.
Empty trophy cases get a 🕷️ that crawls back-and-forth across the box — charming reminder that nothing's been earned yet, and a low-key push to log your first sighting.
Awarded automatically the moment you cross a threshold — no claim button, no waiting. Seven categories:
🌌 Sighting Volume — First Light (1) → Outpost Legend (1,000).
🔭 Site Variety — Local Spotter (5 spots) → Cartographer (100 spots).
🌎 Geographic Spread — Road Warrior (3 regions) → Continental (25 regions, ~1,500 mi spread).
⛈️ Storm Hunter — First Storm (G1) → Extreme Sighting (G5, the rarest).
🌙 Late Night — Night Owl (5 small-hours) → Vampire (100 small-hours).
✨ Special Conditions — Polar Pull (lat > 55°N), Tropic Witness (lat < 35°N, big-storm bragging rights), Equinox Warrior (Russell-McPherron window), Full Moon Defier (caught it through lunar washout), Cloud Threader (caught it through clouds).
🍃 Seasonal — Spring / Summer / Autumn / Winter Specialist (10 sightings in that season — a real seasonal commitment, not a one-good-week thing). Plus Four Seasons for catching at least one in every season.
Plus manual badges handed out by admins for one-off events — rare configurations, community contributions, or just being the chaser who showed up to the unusual show. The system protects badge integrity: sighting reports are tied to your actual GPS (or IP-based location when GPS is off), so you can't game Polar Pull from Florida. And admins can revoke any badge earned via spammed or fake reports — keeps the trophy case honest.
LEARNING
Interactive simulators that make the science click. Built around how chasers actually learn — not lecture-style. Each module is a touch-driven sandbox you can play with for two minutes and walk away with a real intuition.
Aurora Colors (top) lets you drag sliders to see how storm intensity, particle density, and light pollution shape what your eyes vs your camera will actually see — finally answers "why did it look pink in the photos but green in real life?"
MLT Clock visualizes magnetic local time as Earth rotates so you see why magnetic midnight matters for substorms. Solar Cycle shows where we are in the 11-year sunspot cycle and what to expect. Seasonal Effects explains the Russell-McPherron Effect (why aurora peaks at the equinoxes) without jargon, with a polarity slider you can drag through the year. Magnetosphere Sim shows the bow shock, magnetopause, magnetotail, and the dynamic boundary that produces aurora in the first place.
Hit the HELP button in the timeline, then tap any element on the screen to learn what it is. Every dashboard widget, map layer toggle, chase tool, and footer button is wired up. Turns the whole app into a self-guided explainer.
No manual to read, no docs to dig through, no tooltips to memorize. Point at what you don’t understand, and the app tells you what it is, what threshold matters for chasing, and where the data comes from.
Plain-language definitions of every space-weather term used anywhere in the app, written for chasers, not academics. Bz, By, Bx, Bt, Kp, Hp30/60, AE, AL, AU, SNAP, MLT, OVATION, IMF, HSS, CME, CIR, ICME, EPAM, sheath, flux rope, Bothmer-Schwenn, Russell-McPherron, substorm onset / expansion / recovery — if it shows up on the dashboard, it’s defined.
Search by term, browse by category, or land directly from any tap-help interaction.