Pocket Radar vs Heliograph

What will the weather bring today, this evening or over the weekend? Pocket Radar helps you plan ahead with hourly forecasts, temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind and weather maps. A FORECAST FOR YOUR PLANS Check current conditions and feels-like temperature. Explore the next 48 hours or look ahead with a 7-day forecast. Whether you’re heading to work, taking a walk or planning a weekend outdoors, choose a place and see what to expect. TEMPERATURE: KNOW WHAT TO WEAR See how warm the afternoon will feel and how much cooler the evening may become. Compare temperatures across the map to prepare for a trip or choose a comfortable time to head outside. PRESSURE: FOLLOW THE CHANGING WEATHER Check the atmospheric pressure forecast and see how it changes over time. Explore the pressure map for a broader view of weather patterns around your area and farther afield. WIND: PREPARE FOR THE CONDITIONS Check wind speed, direction and expected gusts before you leave. Find a suitable time for a run, a bike ride or a day by the water, with the forecast for the place you choose. RAIN, SNOW AND CLOUDS See where precipitation is expected and how it may move. Check conditions around your town or along your journey to help decide whether to bring an umbrella or adjust your outdoor plans. MORE INFORMATION BEFORE YOU GO • Air quality to help you plan time outdoors. • Humidity and cloud cover for a fuller picture of the weather. • Sunrise and sunset times to make the most of daylight. • Tropical cyclone tracks and thunderstorm outlooks to follow developing weather. • Satellite thermal hotspots for additional information about possible fire activity. WEATHER WITHIN REACH Use Pocket Radar on iPhone and iPad, add Home Screen widgets and check precipitation maps on Apple Watch. On iPad and Duo, view the map and detailed forecast side by side. Open Pocket Radar and prepare for the weather wherever your day takes you. Data and forecast availability vary by region and source. Forecasts and air quality estimates may differ from actual conditions. A satellite thermal hotspot does not confirm a fire. For hazardous conditions, follow official warnings from local authorities.

Heliograph is a focused, native space-weather app for Solar Cycle 25. It pulls current conditions and short-horizon forecasts directly from public government sources and shows them plainly — with an honest timestamp on every value. What "live" means here Heliograph shows real conditions and short-range forecasts — not millisecond telemetry. While the app is open it refreshes on each source's own cadence, and every reading carries an "as of" timestamp so you always know how fresh it is. The freshest inputs come from NOAA's SOLAR-1 spacecraft at L1: in-situ solar wind within about 5 minutes, CME imagery within about 30 minutes — that is the ceiling, and we never pretend to beat it. Typical refreshes: aurora oval ~5 min, solar wind ~60 s, Kp ~15 min, NOAA G/S/R scales ~5–10 min, X-ray flares ~60 s, solar cycle daily. When solar-wind data is unavailable, the aurora forecast honestly falls back to a Kp-driven nowcast with reduced lead time, and Bz-dependent storm triggers are paused and labelled — we show the degraded state instead of hiding it. Ambient Mode — a living aurora The signature experience: a full-screen, data-reactive ambient that means something. One derived intensity drives everything — calm teal when quiet, brightening greens as activity builds, a magenta-violet push in a real storm. Pick your scene: a 3D aurora globe with the live OVATION oval over Earth's night side (australis first), the live Sun from NASA SDO, or a flowing solar-wind field. On Apple TV it's the lean-back living-room hero; on iPhone you can AirPlay or screen-mirror it to any TV. Built to run for hours with burn-in and thermal care — and it always eases to a calm fallback rather than fake a storm from stale data. Aurora australis, first-class Most aurora apps treat the Southern Hemisphere as an afterthought. Heliograph renders aurora australis first, alongside borealis — a real polar map with the auroral oval, local darkness/terminator, and your own viewline, plus a forecast scrub over the next 90 minutes. A "where do I go tonight?" ground map shows the visibility line across your region and how far toward the pole you'd need to travel. The infrastructure-impact lens Heliograph translates the current storm level into plain-language impact on what storms actually touch: the power grid (geomagnetically induced currents), GPS/GNSS accuracy, and HF radio. A world impact map places those effects on the day/night globe (colour-blind-safe). It is deliberately non-alarmist — most days, even minor storms, pass with no noticeable effect, and the app says so. Storm tracking & alerts A quiet → watch → storm state machine reads solar wind and Kp and shows exactly which triggers fired, with a Sun → L1 → Earth cinematic of the real arrival lead time. On iPhone, while you have Heliograph open, a storm Live Activity surfaces a significant storm on your Lock Screen — no account, no tracking. You can also opt into on-device "aurora likely tonight" alerts. On every surface: Lock Screen and StandBy widgets, a Control Center control, plain-language explainers, a colour legend, and a recent-activity solar time-lapse. Privacy, by design No account. No analytics. No tracking. No third-party SDKs. Data is fetched directly from public NOAA and NASA endpoints — Heliograph runs no servers of its own and stores nothing about you. Your location, if you grant it, is used only on-device to draw your aurora viewline — never stored or sent anywhere. Data sources NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) — SOLAR-1 at L1, the GOES satellites, and ground stations — plus NASA SDO solar imagery via the Helioviewer Project. Heliograph is not affiliated with or endorsed by NOAA or NASA. Ambient Mode includes solar imagery, hourly Moon visualization, latest published Earth photography, dated cloud and thermal-detection maps, Aurora Globe and Solar Wind. Image dates and source details are available in the app. These views are not live video or emergency warnings.