Where Our Live Dashboards Get Their Data
By Lucian — builder & engineer, LK Forge
The earthquake, volcano, space-weather, asteroid and weather trackers on LK Forge all read straight from the agency that measures the thing. This is the full list of what feeds each one, how fresh it is, and where to go for the official source. Every row was read from the tool’s own code, not quoted from anywhere.
Earth hazards
Feed: Real-time GeoJSON summary feeds (feed/v1.0/summary/), refreshed about once a minute
Carries: Magnitude, depth, coordinates, place and event time
Feed: The "Volcanoes of the World" web feature service (WFS), read through a same-origin proxy and cached
Carries: Holocene volcanoes, last-eruption dates and the eruptions still flagged as continuing
Space
Feed: GOES X-ray flux, solar-wind speed and magnetic field, the planetary Kp index, the R/S/G storm scales and F10.7 flux
Carries: Current conditions and recent activity, refreshed every couple of minutes
Feed: The Close-Approach Data (CAD) API, read through a small same-origin proxy because JPL sends no CORS header
Carries: Upcoming near-Earth close approaches with size, speed and miss distance
Feed: NORAD orbital elements (TLE), propagated on your device with satellite.js
Carries: Live positions and passes, computed in the browser rather than fetched per second
Feed: Professional survey imagery served as tiles
Carries: A pan-and-zoom map of the real sky
Weather & sky
Feed: The free Forecast API, which blends national weather services and global models
Carries: Current conditions and a 7-day outlook for any place
Feed: The CO-OPS data-getter API
Carries: Predicted high and low tides for US coastal stations
Feed: The public CurrentStorms.json feed
Carries: Active tropical systems and their forecast tracks
Feed: No network request: phase, rise and set are calculated in the browser from open astronomical algorithms
Carries: Moon phase and illumination, sunrise and sunset for any date and place
How We Handle It
Straight from the agency
Every figure comes from the primary source — USGS, the Smithsonian, NOAA, NASA/JPL, Open-Meteo — not from a data reseller or a scraped copy. Where an agency does something we do not, such as issuing official warnings, we say so and point you at them.
In your browser, not our server
The feeds are fetched by your own browser as the page loads. The few endpoints that block cross-origin reads pass through a thin same-origin proxy that adds the missing header and nothing else — it stores no data and identifies no one.
Computed, not guessed
The astronomy tools carry no live feed at all. Moon phase, sunrise and sunset, and satellite passes are worked out on your device from published algorithms and orbital elements, so they keep working offline.
We measure nothing ourselves
LK Forge runs no seismometers, no telescopes and no weather model. These pages are a clean, fast way to read what the agencies already publish, with a timestamp on what you are looking at.
Common Questions
Do the live dashboards send my location anywhere?
Only when the answer needs it. The weather forecast, tides and "near me" sorting send a place — either a city you searched or coordinates you granted — to the relevant API to get a result back. The earthquake, volcano and space-weather feeds are global and need no location at all. The moon and sun tools compute everything on your device and make no request. Nothing on these pages is used to track you, and there are no ads.
How often does the data update?
It depends on the source. USGS earthquake feeds refresh about once a minute; NOAA space-weather feeds every couple of minutes. The Smithsonian volcano catalogue changes slowly, so it is cached. Weather, tides, hurricanes and asteroids are fetched fresh each time you open the tool or change location — reload to pull the latest values. The astronomy tools are always current because they compute from the clock, not a feed.
Can I use these feeds myself?
Yes. Every source here is a free, public API or service: USGS, NOAA SWPC, NOAA Tides & Currents, the National Hurricane Center, NASA/JPL CNEOS, the Smithsonian GVP web service, Open-Meteo and CelesTrak. None needs a paid plan for this kind of use, and each tool page credits and links its source so you can go straight to it.
Is any of this an official warning system?
No. Every dashboard shows conditions that have already been reported or computed — it cannot predict or warn you before an earthquake, eruption, storm or solar flare. For official watches, warnings and alerts, follow the responsible agency: USGS and your local authorities for earthquakes, your local volcano observatory, NOAA SWPC for space weather, and the National Hurricane Center for tropical storms.