These Aurora alerts are a brand new service. Twitter will send a text to your cell phone to alert you that the Aurora Borealis is active.
WHEN ARE ALERTS SENT OUT?
Tweets (messages) will start going out once the Space Environment Center Neural Net predicts a Geomagnetic Activity level (Kp number) of higher than 3.8 signifying the Aurora is reasonably active.
Once the first tweet goes out for an auroral event, tweets will go out every 60 minutes until the storm dies down (Kp number goes below 2.5). But if the Aurora's intensity goes up or down more than 1.3 Kp from the last tweet, a new message will immediately go out. This way you'll know if storm is getting stronger or dying out.
There will be a final tweet once the Kp falls below 2.5 to basically signal the party is over.
No more tweets will occur until the next time the Kp prediction spikes above the 3.8 level.
2. After signing up, you need to have twitter “follow” the user called “Aurora_Alerts” -- to do this, navigate to http://twitter.com/Aurora_Alerts
3. Under the little Aurora picture you'll see a “Follow” button. Click on it to become a follower of Aurora_Alerts.
4. Now you'll get Aurora Alerts on your twitter page. But if you want to get texted on your cell phone, you'll need to do some more work . . .
5. Go to your Twitter home page. Click on “Settings,” then “Devices,” and follow the procedure to set up your cell phone.
6. Once that is done, you need to go to your Twitter home page and click your “Device Updates” to phone.
7. Then, finally, you need click on Aurora_Alerts under the list of people you are “following” and turn “Device Updates” on for the user Aurora_Alerts.
Also, you should limit when you get your alerts. (You don't want to get alerts at noon or at 6:00 AM when you can't, or don't want to, see the Aurora). Just go to "Settings" and under "Account," and make sure your local time zone is specified. Then go to "Devices" and specify the times you want your updates to be turned off.
Well, Twitter is free (at the time of this writing) and we're not charging anything, however you should know what you are being charged to receive text messages. You can always pause or end your receipt of this service via your Twitter account.
