Aurora Watch UK

FAQs

• Why do you notify in the daytime?

Upon reflection we decided to do as the University of Lancaster does and alert even during daylight hours (when an aurora cannot be seen) since it lets you know in advance of nighttime that there is activity that might continue into the night.

However there is now an option in Settings: Daytime Alert Notifications that allows you to turn off daytime alerts.  

This uses a hard coded location of Glasgow, there are other locations around the UK that you can choose however.  One of them will be close enough to yours for it to work (this is an UK app so only UK locations provided).   A location is needed to look up Sunrise and Sunset without pestering you for the Location permission.

• Why does the Status colour meaning say e.g. "It is likely that aurora will be visible by eye and camera from anywhere in the UK" when in fact much of the south will be very unlikely to see one?

The meanings are provided by the University of Lancaster.  Since they provide the data we are using their meanings - though it has to be admitted that this one does seem over optimistic.  

• Why am I not getting alerts/notifications?

There are many possible reasons for this including (though not limited to):

• check your phone's Settings/Notifications/App settings to see that Notifications are enabled

• No mobile signal.

• Phone going into idle mode (perhaps due to battery saver).  This will inhibit notifications.

• Do Not Disturb was turned on (common at night!).

• The app was force closed so no longer gets notifications (a phone restart will fix this). 

It is worth checking for all of the above.

Also try using the Settings/Get test Alert to see if your phone is receiving push notifications.

• Why do the alerts not arrive immediately?

The University of Lancaster data takes a while to settle down after the hour (https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/explanation/): "The value for the current hour is updated every 3 minutes based on the available data. For this reason the value is often low in the first few minutes of the hour and will increase later-on.".  

Since aurora activity goes up and down during an hour an alert level can be reached at any time in the hour.

Add to that the time lapse with receiving a push notification and the way that phones limit the reception of push notifications it may take a little while for the alert to happen on your phone.

Also note that the time of the alert (the time when the University of Lancaster updated it) is in the notification itself, e.g. "Up to Amber (at 20:14).".  The time on the data (e.g. "23 Nov 2023 20:00") is simply the hour the data is for; not the time of the alert.

• Why does the app give my location as somewhere else, e.g. Sumburgh Head?

The location of the magnetometer is only showing what the University of Lancaster is using. Aurora Watch UK only uses their alert data.  So it cannot be changed and I do not think it makes much difference since we are so far from the sun.  Note that the app says Magnetometer location. 

Feedback/Bugs

Please email any feedback or bugs to aurorawatch@smallbouldering.com. 

Errors will be easier to follow up if you give as much detail as possible including what happened, your phone model and operating system version.