Frequently
asked questions

Yes. Free, no ads, no subscription, no account, and no premium tier withholding features. Everything described on this site is available to everyone. It's paid for out of pocket and supported by people who choose to shout a coffee. That's entirely optional and changes nothing in the app.

No. It's a progressive web app. Open spottheaurora.co.nz in your browser and it works straight away, on phone, tablet or desktop.

To get the full experience with push notifications, add it to your home screen. On iPhone or iPad, open it in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen. On Android, open it in Chrome and tap Install app. It then runs full screen with its own icon, same as a store app.

Facebook and Instagram open links in their own in-app browser, which can't install web apps. Tap the menu button and choose Open in Browser or Open in Chrome, then install from there.

No, but it's much more useful if you do. Without it you get the reference forecast for Greymouth. With it, your score is adjusted for your latitude and your alerts fire based on whether the aurora is visible from where you actually are.

Your position is used on your device and by the alert system. It is never logged, sold or shared with a third party.

They're a visibility estimate, not a probability that the aurora exists. Roughly: under 20 percent nothing, 20 to 35 long exposure camera only, 35 to 50 your phone's night mode will catch it, 50 to 65 a faint glow from a dark site, 65 to 80 visible to the naked eye, and above 80 get outside now.

Those are referenced to the South Island. Dark skies and a clear southern horizon matter enormously, so a 45 percent night from a genuinely dark site beats a 60 percent night from a suburban backyard.

Because Kp is a planetary average published three hours after the fact. It tells you roughly how disturbed the whole Earth was, not what's happening over New Zealand in the next fifteen minutes.

This uses live solar wind measured at L1 about 45 to 60 minutes upstream of us, a direct auroral power measurement from the GOES satellites, and a magnetometer in Canterbury that responds within a minute to a substorm current overhead. When those disagree with a stale Kp number, they're usually the ones worth believing.

Honestly, about an hour with real confidence. The solar wind is measured 1.5 million km upsun, which buys roughly 45 to 60 minutes of warning. The Now and 15 minute slots are the reliable ones, 30 minutes is medium confidence, and the 60 minute slot is guidance. Read that one as conditions building rather than a promise.

Further out than that, the CME visualisation is your tool. It shows what's in flight days ahead, though arrival times always carry hours of uncertainty.

Three things to check. Make sure you can see the stars, because if you can't, there's cloud or haze in the way. Make sure you're actually looking south. And make sure there's no immediate light pollution near you, or anywhere between you and the southern horizon.

It's also worth taking a long exposure on your phone pointed south. Cameras see aurora long before eyes do, and it's often already there.

It's the sudden burst that most New Zealand aurora actually consists of. Energy loads into Earth's magnetic tail while the solar wind field points south, the tail stretches, and eventually it snaps, firing particles into the atmosphere and lighting the sky up in minutes.

The app estimates the probability of that happening in the next 30 and 60 minutes, and separately detects when one has already started by watching the Canterbury magnetometer. That's your cue to be outside with your eyes adjusted, not still deciding.

Because they can see it and you can't, which is the entire point. Visibility alerts are worked out per person. The app finds where the oval's edge is, converts your position to geomagnetic latitude, and only notifies you when the aurora reaches your horizon, at the tier that applies to you. Someone 300 km further south gets a better alert, or gets one when you don't.

No. Every category is opt in. Visibility alerts only escalate, so once you've had the camera tier you won't get it again unless conditions improve to the next tier up. Each tier has a two hour cooldown per person, shock alerts have four hours, and the overnight summary is capped at one a day. On a bright moon night the lower tiers switch off entirely.

A single evening summary between 6 and 9pm telling you whether tonight is worth staying up for. You set the bar: every night regardless, or only when conditions reach camera, phone, or naked eye standard. One notification a day, maximum.

Check three things. That you installed the app to your home screen, because on iOS especially push only works for an installed web app and not a Safari tab. That notifications are allowed for it in your phone's settings. And that conditions have actually warranted an alert since you subscribed, because on a quiet week silence is correct behaviour.

Still stuck? Email help@spottheaurora.co.nz.

Make sure you can see the stars, make sure you're looking south, and make sure there's no immediate light pollution nearby or in the direction you're looking.

The South Island gets a lot more aurora than the North Island, and the further south you go the more chance you have of seeing it.

The spring and autumn equinoxes are the best time, but aurora can happen at any time of year.

You're also more likely to see one around the peak of the solar cycle, which comes around every 11 years. The last peak was 2023 to 2024, and the next will be around 2034 to 2035.

If you have a DSLR or mirrorless camera, set a long exposure of 20 seconds or more, open the aperture as wide as it will go, and set ISO to 3200 or higher.

That's generic advice as a place to start. Your stars won't be pin point sharp and there will be little aberrations in the corners, but try those settings first and then adjust as you need.

For phones, swap to night mode or pro mode, 4 seconds or more, ISO as high as it will go, and stay still.

Dean French at TNR Protography in Greymouth. It's a passion project that started after he became obsessed with the aurora in early 2023.

He'd barely touched a line of code in his life, so he used AI tools to help build the app into what it is now. The logic is his and the visualisations are all his. The AI helped turn those thoughts into actual working things. More about the project

Partly. The solar data, flares, CMEs, solar wind, the 3D visualisation and coronal holes, is global and works anywhere. The aurora score, the ground magnetometer, the sightings map and the cameras are all built around New Zealand and the southern lights, so they're most useful here. Southern Australia gets reasonable value out of it too.

No. It's a chaser's tool and a citizen science project, built on the same public data the professionals use, but not an official warning service. For critical infrastructure or official warnings, use NOAA SWPC and MetService.

Both welcome. Flick us a message on Facebook or email help@spottheaurora.co.nz. A good chunk of what's in the app came from users asking for it. The change log shows what's shipped recently.