Penton Earth
Every tracked satellite in five public catalogs, propagated in your browser with SGP4. Lit by the sun’s real position right now.
The sun decides how good your radio day is.
Flares change HF propagation on the sunlit side of the planet within minutes. Geomagnetic storms push the aurora toward the equator, degrade GPS accuracy and add drag to low-orbit satellites. These are the real products, refreshed every 90 seconds.
What it means for communications right now
- HF
HF radio, sunlit side
Waiting for NOAA data…
… - POL
Polar and high-latitude HF
… - GNSS
GPS and GNSS accuracy
… - LEO
Low-orbit satellite drag
…
Plain-language reading of real NOAA data using the NOAA R (radio blackout) and G (geomagnetic storm) scales. General guidance, not a forecast and not a substitute for official products. The auroral oval on the globe is a simple model driven by Kp and is labelled as such.
When the ISS crosses Orlando.
Computed in your browser from the station’s current public elements. A pass is marked visible when the station is sunlit while the sky over Orlando is dark: a steady, bright point moving across the sky.
- Computing passes…
What a dish in Orlando can see.
Elevation decides whether a terminal, handset or GPS receiver has a clear path. Below about 25°, buildings and trees start to matter.
- Waiting for orbital data…
Why low orbit feels fast.
A radio signal climbs to the satellite and back down twice for every round trip. Geometry alone sets the floor before any router touches the packet.
One verified site: Orlando.
Penton Systems operates from Orlando, Florida. The globe marks only that location; we will add others when they exist. The figures here are measured from the server you are talking to: no addresses, no topology, no internals.
Machines appear in the fleet panel only when they send an authenticated heartbeat, so the count is always one we can measure. Lab nodes begin reporting once the public domain is live.
How far to trust this page
- 01
Orbital elements
Public two-line element sets from CelesTrak, cached by our server and refreshed no more often than the provider allows (every two hours). Your browser propagates each orbit with SGP4 (satellite.js) once per second.
- 02
Accuracy
SGP4 from fresh elements is typically good to about a kilometre for low orbit and degrades as elements age. These are predictions, not operator telemetry, and a satellite overhead does not imply service availability.
- 03
Space weather
Real-time products from the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, refreshed every 90 seconds. The auroral oval is a simplified model from Kp, not the NOAA OVATION product.
- 04
Your latency bound
Light in optical fibre travels at roughly 200,000 km/s. Half your measured round trip times that speed is the furthest you could be from Orlando by fibre. Real routes are longer, so you are closer than the ring.
Earth imagery: NASA Visible Earth Blue Marble and Black Marble (public domain). 3D: Three.js. Orbits: satellite.js. Starlink, Iridium, GPS and other names belong to their owners and identify public orbital data only.