Something else to be aware of is compromised LinkedIn profiles. I was recently contacted by a very real looking profile on LinkedIn, who was supposedly recruiting for a very real position at a very real company that the profile actually worked for. Red flags were:

1. Bad english/spelling in messages
2. Compensation a little too good to be true
3. Sounded too easy to ‘get’ the job
4. Person’s job title had nothing to do with recruitment until very recently
5. ‘Application form’ they sent me looked a little bogus

They wanted me to fill out a form with all my info., including SSN, and send photocopies of my ID. When I asked for an email address at the company in question to send everything to, they ghosted me.

Yikes, that one almost got me. Advice here is to always manually ‘two factor’ identify people who contact you out of the blue.

Safe hunting folks.

Subbed!

Awesome, thanks for the post! I’ve been aware of OSM for a long time, but haven’t thought about it in a while. After a couple of good app recommendations from the comments, I am surprised how far it’s come. Definitely going to start using/contributing as much as I can.

Yeah, totally - the longitude doesn’t really matter, it’s the latitude that’s important. Auroras usually occur between 10 and 20 degrees from the geomagnetic pole. This does bias North America and Greenland a bit, since the geomagnetic pole is shifted toward Canada relative to the geographic north pole. But, if you take a look at the University of Alaska link I posted, they do publish forecast maps for Europe and the north and south poles as well as the US.

Me too! Happened to see it in Connecticut when I was a teenager, totally took me by surprise. Space weather apps were definitely not a thing at the time.