In-house products · 2026
Aurora Monitor
A web app that keeps translating open space weather data from NOAA into a clear aurora forecast for any location, with an interactive 3D globe, a 2D map and a timeline of the last 24 hours.
Visit the website- Client
- Aurora Monitor – our own product: an aurora forecast in the browser
- Industry
- In-house products
- Year
- 2026
Challenge
The data that predicts the northern lights is public: the Space Weather Prediction Center of the US agency NOAA continuously publishes solar wind measurements, the Kp index, forecasts and the OVATION model, a global grid of aurora probabilities. In that form, though, it is raw data, tables and series of numbers that only specialists can read.
The goal was an application that turns this data into something anyone can read at a glance: is it worth looking at the night sky tonight, at my own location, without reading tables, on a desktop or a phone. Anyone who wants more should still find every detail.
Solution
At its heart is an interactive 3D globe in WebGL (three.js and globe.gl) showing the aurora oval from the OVATION model, the day-night line and, if you like, the lights of the cities. A 2D map in Leaflet, a place search and a timeline that rewinds the last 24 hours complete it. The first view answers the real question in one sentence: how good the chance of aurora is tonight at the chosen place, and why.
Below, the app shows eight solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field readings, including Bz, Kp, speed and density, as live values with their trend, plus a forecast for the coming days and the 27-day outlook. The data comes straight from NOAA’s interfaces, Open-Meteo and NASA DONKI; a lean PHP service handles the place search and further requests. A second mode calculates visible passes of Starlink satellite trains.
The interface is bilingual (English and Polish) with hreflang tags, runs without a framework in plain JavaScript with ES modules and offers an aurora alert notification. Settings such as a view of the north pole, the whole planet or the south pole, local time or UTC and a permanent night mode are chosen right in the app.
Result
Several specialist data sources have become one application that answers a simple question and still keeps the details for those who want them. The project shows how we work when data from external interfaces has to become understandable as it arrives: data processing, 3D visualisation in the browser and an interface that works on any device.