Python code to retrieve forecast for Aurora Borealis

Posted On March 3, 2023

Tracking auroras is a little more complex than tracking celestial objects such as planets and asteroids. Auroras are caused by interactions between charged particles from the Sun and the Earth’s magnetic field, so the position and intensity of auroras can change quickly and unpredictably.

One way to track auroras is to use data from a network of ground-based sensors that monitor the brightness and variability of the aurora. Some organizations, such as the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, provide real-time aurora forecasts based on this data. To access these forecasts, you can make API requests to the organization’s server and parse the response data to determine the current aurora activity.

Here is an example of how you could retrieve and parse aurora forecast data from the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute in Python:

import requests

# Define the API endpoint
url = 'https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/text/aurora-nowcast-map.txt'

# Make the API request
response = requests.get(url)

# Check if the request was successful
if response.status_code == 200:
    # Parse the response data
    data = response.text.splitlines()
    # Extract the relevant data
    aurora_forecast = data[3].strip().split()[-1]
    print("Aurora forecast:", aurora_forecast)
else:
    print("Failed to retrieve aurora data")

In this code, the requests library is used to make a GET request to the API endpoint, which returns a text file containing the aurora forecast data. The if statement checks if the request was successful (HTTP status code 200), and if so, the response data is split into lines and the relevant information (the aurora forecast) is extracted from the fourth line. The aurora forecast is then printed to the console.

This code will give you an idea of the current aurora activity, but keep in mind that auroras can change quickly, so it’s a good idea to retrieve updated forecasts regularly.

Here is an example of what the output of the code might look like:

Aurora forecast: minor

In this example, the aurora forecast is “minor”, indicating low aurora activity. The actual aurora forecast will depend on the current conditions and may change over time.