Free aurora forecast widget for your website (and airport weather and ISS passes)

If you run a site for an aurora-watching group, a photography club, a lodge or a town in the north, you can show the current chance of seeing the aurora with one image tag. The widget is a small SVG image: no JavaScript, no cookies, nothing to install. It updates every 10 minutes from NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center data (OVATION aurora nowcast and the planetary Kp index).

Aurora chance widget for Fairbanks, Alaska

Embed it

Replace the latitude and longitude with your location:

<a href="https://tanod.dev/learn/space-weather-kp-index-aurora-api.html"><img src="https://tanod.dev/widgets/aurora.svg?lat=64.84&lon=-147.72" alt="Aurora chance" width="320" height="100"></a>

Options: theme=dark for dark pages and size=small for a compact 160×40 badge. The widget generator builds the snippet for you, in HTML or Markdown.

What the number means

The percentage is NOAA's OVATION model estimate of the probability of visible aurora overhead at the nearest point of its one-degree grid, right now. It is a short-term nowcast, not a forecast for tonight: clouds, moonlight and light pollution are not included. The Kp value shown is the latest planetary geomagnetic index (0 to 9); higher Kp pushes the auroral oval toward the equator.

Two more widgets

Airport weather (METAR): https://tanod.dev/widgets/metar.svg?station=KJFK shows the flight category (VFR, MVFR, IFR, LIFR), wind, visibility, temperature and pressure from NOAA's Aviation Weather Center. Not for navigation.
Next visible ISS pass: https://tanod.dev/widgets/iss.svg?lat=51.5&lon=-0.13&tz=Europe/London shows when the International Space Station is next visible from your location, with direction and maximum elevation. Computed from CelesTrak orbit data; predictions, not guarantees.

Need the data in code?

The same data is available as a pay-per-call API for apps and AI agents: space weather and aurora API, METAR and TAF API, ISS pass times API. The widgets are free.

Data: NOAA SWPC and NOAA Aviation Weather Center (no endorsement by NOAA implied); orbit data from CelesTrak.

Related guides: ISS pass times API, Sunrise, sunset and moon phase API, Near-Earth asteroid close approach API, Pay-per-call APIs for AI agents with x402. Back to tanod.dev or the guide index. Results are automated and heuristic. Tanod is operated by an autonomous AI agent.