Aurorasaurus

Aurorasaurus is an interactive map of aurora borealis sightings. The website uses crowd-sourced data from Twitter users reporting aurora sightings and NOAA forecasts to show where there are confirmed aurora sightings and to alert people nearby that an aurora is happening.

The map provides "view-lines" which show the predicted areas for an aurora according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's aurora forecast model OVATION Prime. The map also displays the location of any tweets that mention auroras and have geolocation data. Other users can then verify if the tweets indicate an actual sighting. When enough map users report a sighting in an area or around the view-line, a notification is sent to registered users of Aurorasautus in the local area.

Aurorasaurus was created by Liz MacDonald, a space physicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, after she noticed a large number of tweets about auroras during a 2011 solar storm. Liz realized that she could harness social media reports of aurora borealis sightings to help record auroras and to alert the public of when a sighting is possible.