AuroraWatch UK server issues

10:38 BST on 26 September 2020: we are aware that last night (from around 1800 BST til 0100 BST) the AuroraWatch UK website was unavailable. Additionally, the AuroraWatch data was not being provided by our APIs and so any services relying on these (e.g. AuroraWatch UK apps) were not working as expected. This also resulted…

Yellow Caterpillar excavator digging up dirt.

Disruption to LAN2

From tomorrow, and lasting for a few weeks, the SAMNET Lancaster magnetometer (LAN2) will be turned off. This is due to infrastructure improvement works at the Hazelrigg Weather Station field site. Data users may have noticed that the magnetometer has been acting a little odd recently and so LAN2 had already been removed from the…

The aurora that didn’t happen

As many of you will have seen, there was some pretty big hype last week about a massive solar storm which would mean the Northern Lights would be visible from much of the UK: What was the reason? On Wednesday 20 March, a coronal mass ejection (CME) was launched from the Sun. CMEs are huge…

Potential disruption to AuroraWatch UK on 09/10 December

On Sunday 9th December, Lancaster University will be completing an upgrade to their file storage system. This work will affect the server that stores the AuroraWatch UK data. The work is expected to commence at 6pm (UTC) on Sunday 09 December and be complete by 8am (UTC) on Monday 10 December 2018. However, some manual…

LAN2 alert issues

The magnetometer located near Lancaster University, known as LAN2, is currently experiencing an issue with one of its sensors. While investigations are underway, we have temporarily removed LAN2 from the list of AuroraWatch UK alert sites. The data from LAN2 is still available on our website but our alert system will not use its data…

It’s survey time!

Edit (24/05/18 19:36 BST): the survey is now closed. Thanks to all who took part! Today we are opening up our AuroraWatch UK alert survey and we’d like to encourage you to take part. The aim of the survey is to better understand how you use our alerts, how quickly you respond to them, and…

Watch UK aurora live from the comfort of your own home.

We’re sure that many of you have already heard of the Shetland cliff cams: they’re famous amongst the UK aurora hunting community for providing the first sights of aurora from the UK. For those of us who aren’t lucky enough to often see the aurora from our own back yards, the real-time HD video feeds…

Aurora captured near Wooler, Northumerbalnd by Tony Robson.

A night of the shy aurora

Yesterday, we posted that a G2 (moderate) geomagnetic storm watch was in place for 04-05 December. This storm watch was issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency who are responsible for space weather forecasts in the US, and was the result of a recurrent coronal hole. This coronal hole was the source of a…

How to set up Twitter notifications

Twitter can be used to receive instant AuroraWatch UK alerts. In the following we describe the steps to get the Twitter alerts set-up on your phone. Step 1: If you don’t have one already, create a Twitter account. Step 2: Download the Twitter app to your smartphone and log in to your account. Android iOS…