Send aurora visibility alerts with NOAA, Open-Meteo and Slack

Quick overview

Youtube Video: https://youtu.be/g4AklHzTYy0?si=ked6L2SbpdirFNA7

This workflow checks NOAA space-weather data, Open-Meteo cloud forecasts, and local sun/moon conditions every 10 minutes to calculate an aurora visibility score, then sends a Slack alert (optionally with a live all-sky camera image) when conditions meet your thresholds and cooldown rules.

How it works

1. Runs every 10 minutes on a schedule and loads a location configuration (coordinates, thresholds, and camera URL).
2. Fetches near-real-time NOAA SWPC feeds for planetary Kp, solar wind magnetic field (Bz/Bt), and solar wind plasma (speed/density) and normalizes them into current metrics with data age checks.
3. Calculates the current sun altitude (darkness) plus moon altitude and illumination for the configured coordinates and exits if it is not dark enough.
4. Requests Open-Meteo forecasts for two nearby points (the target location and the all-sky camera location) and computes an “optical obstruction” cloud metric for current and near-future conditions.
5. Computes an aurora viability score (space weather, sky clarity, and moon interference), then exits if the score is below the configured threshold or the source data is incomplete/stale.
6. Enforces an alert cooldown (or allows re-alerting when the score increases significantly), builds a formatted dispatch message, and tries to download the latest all-sky camera frame.
7. Posts the alert to Slack, uploading the image when available or sending a text-only message otherwise, and stores the last alert time/score to enforce cooldown on future runs.

Setup

1. Add Slack credentials, set the target Slack channel ID, and ensure the channel allows file uploads if you want image alerts.
2. Update the Config values for your location (name, latitude/longitude, timezone) and tune thresholds such as kpRequired, darknessThreshold, scoreThreshold, cooldownMinutes, and rescoreBump.
3. Set allSkyUrl/allSkyLabel and the all-sky camera coordinates (allSkyLat/allSkyLon) to a publicly accessible image endpoint if you want the workflow to attach a live frame.