Every aircraft is a string standing on a 3D grid of the sky: east–west sets where it sounds in the stereo field, north–south sets how it’s played, and altitude sets the instrument and the note. Below 10,000 ft it’s a jazz drum kit (kick near the ground, then toms, brushed snare and cymbals as you climb), from 10,000 to 25,000 ft a nylon-string classical guitar, and above 25,000 ft an alto saxophone playing the melody, each climbing in pitch with height. Strings north of San Angelo let their notes ring and hold; strings to the south play short and dry. East to west is also time: each bar is a swung beat, and an aircraft’s east–west position sets where in the bar it lands. The direction most of the traffic is flying picks the key, with north as C and a half step for every 30° clockwise. More aircraft descending than climbing makes it minor, more climbing makes it major, and a tie makes it suspended. Ground speed is how hard each note is played. In the phrase, a radar arm sweeps clockwise from north, and each 45° slice of sky becomes one bar with its own chord.

The green glow on the globe is NOAA’s forecast of where the aurora is, for about the next half hour to hour and a half. The brighter it is, the more likely the aurora is straight overhead there. It’s drawn about 70 miles up, where the green light happens, and the strongest patches reach up to where the rarer red and pink light glows. It fades on the daylight side, where nobody can see it. You don’t have to be under the oval: a big display can be seen from hundreds of miles south of it, low on the northern horizon. That’s why San Angelo can see a severe storm (Kp 8 and up) even though the oval stays far to the north.

This is the same 150-nautical-mile circle as the air traffic view, but everything here is in orbit. Every active satellite in the public catalog (over 15,000, most of them Starlink) is run through the standard orbit model right in your browser, and the ones whose ground point falls inside the circle are drawn. Each icon floats above the map on a stem that drops to the spot directly beneath it. The solid line behind it is where it came from over the last 90 seconds and the dashed line is where it goes next. A filled icon is in sunlight and a hollow one is in Earth’s shadow. After dark, the sunlit ones are the moving stars you can see with your own eyes. The side view lines them up by height; the International Space Station’s altitude is marked for scale. Click any satellite for details.

Each icon is a real aircraft broadcasting its own position, drawn in its own shape: airliner, wide-body, regional or business jet, turboprop, light plane, military jet or helicopter. Each icon floats above the map at its altitude, the line under it drops to its spot on the ground, and the side view at the bottom lines everyone up by height. Data blocks read the way a controller’s scope does: callsign, then altitude in hundreds of feet with a climb (↑) or descent (↓) arrow and ground speed in knots. The line out front is where it will be in one minute. Airports follow sectional-chart colors (blue towered, magenta non-towered, double ring military), rings are in nautical miles, and the compass rose on San Angelo’s airport is magnetic. Click any aircraft for details.