# CME Tracker

> CME Tracker is a free, real-time web app that visualizes coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — the solar storms that travel from the Sun to Earth. It plots every CME NASA catalogs, estimates each one's arrival time with a validated drag-based physics model, and shows the geomagnetic-storm impact on Earth. It also replays famous historical solar storms.

## What it does
- Live top-down (heliocentric) map of every CME NASA's DONKI catalogs over the trailing 90 days, drawn as expanding cones colored by speed.
- Arrival-time prediction via the analytic Drag-Based Model (DBM, Vršnak et al. 2013): each CME starts at 21.5 solar radii with its measured speed and decelerates toward the ambient solar wind. Validated to ~12 h median arrival error against 282 real NASA-catalogued shocks (2014–2024) — on par with NASA's full MHD model, WSA-Enlil (~11 h).
- An Earth globe rendered from the Sun's viewpoint showing the sun-facing hemisphere, magnetosphere compression, and aurora ovals on impact.
- Live dashboards: solar wind speed, IMF Bz, planetary Kp index, GOES X-ray flares, sunspot regions, and SDO solar imagery.
- Historical event replays: Carrington 1859, Bastille Day 2000, Halloween 2003, the 2012 near-miss, St. Patrick's Day 2015, September 2017, and the May 2024 Gannon storm.

## Key pages
- [Live tracker](https://cme-tracker.vercel.app/): the interactive app.
- [How to use / full guide](https://cme-tracker.vercel.app/help): documentation of every control, a glossary (CME, solar wind, Bz, Kp, the NOAA G-scale), the accuracy/validation details, and an FAQ.

## Data sources
NASA DONKI (CMEs, flares, shock catalog), NASA SDO (solar imagery), NOAA SWPC (live solar wind, Kp, flares), CDAWeb OMNI & STEREO (historical/in-situ wind), GFZ Potsdam (Kp).

## Notes
- Arrival times are model estimates (typically ±~12 h), for education and situational awareness — not operational forecasts. For official forecasts see NOAA SWPC.
- Author: Mike DiCarlo (https://mikedicarlo.ai).