Every aircraft on this map put itself there. Modern transponders broadcast position, altitude, heading and identity in the clear, on a published frequency, to anyone with a receiver. Volunteers run those receivers and pool the results. This site reads that pool.
That is the entire mechanism, and it explains every gap. An aircraft with its transponder off does not appear. An aircraft over an ocean with no receiver in range does not appear. Operators can and do suppress their registration through published privacy programs. The empty parts of this map are not empty sky.
Update cadence
Aircraft positions are collected once a minute and published as a snapshot. Your browser checks for a new snapshot every thirty seconds. In the worst case a contact you are watching is about ninety seconds behind reality. The age of the last snapshot is shown on the map at all times.
Satellites work differently. Rather than tracking positions, the site downloads orbital element sets once a day and your browser calculates where each object is right now. The maths is standard SGP4. Accuracy degrades the further you get from the element set epoch, which is why they are refreshed daily.
Coverage limits
Aircraft come from OpenSky Network’s worldwide feed plus the community adsb.lol network’s military flag. Coverage is wherever volunteers run receivers: dense over North America, Europe and Japan, thin over oceans, Africa and much of Asia. From far out the civil layer is thinned; zoom in and every contact received in view is drawn. Contacts that only OpenSky saw carry no aircraft type. Satellite categories are capped at three hundred objects each so the page stays usable on a phone, which mainly affects Starlink.
Ships
Ships work like aircraft. Vessels over a certain size must broadcast AIS, the maritime collision-avoidance signal, giving position, speed, heading and identity in the clear. The ship layer reads open AIS data relayed by Fintraffic’s Digitraffic service under CC BY 4.0, which covers the northern Baltic Sea. Positions are collected every two minutes and anything older than an hour is dropped.
The military layer shows only vessels that themselves declare AIS ship type 35 (military operations) or 55 (law enforcement). Warships usually switch AIS off or never declare the type, so this is a small public subset, not a picture of any navy. Private sailing and pleasure boats are left out on purpose.
Real altitude, moving icons
Aircraft and satellites are drawn at their real height above a true-scale globe. Between one-minute snapshots each aircraft is moved forward along its own broadcast track at its own broadcast speed, for at most ninety seconds. That motion is an estimate; the numbers in a contact card are always the last values actually received.
The living planet
Since October 2026 the globe also shows the planet itself: earthquakes from the US Geological Survey, storms, volcanoes and named wildfires from NASA’s EONET tracker, every fire hotspot NASA’s FIRMS satellites saw in the last day, NOAA’s aurora model, a global surface wind field, and NASA’s daily satellite imagery going back two months. Each comes from a public agency feed, refreshed on its own schedule, and each layer on the globe has an i button with its source and its limits. Daily imagery is a mosaic of satellite passes: today’s fills in through the day, and stripes of black are gaps between passes, not events.
Shared links carry the camera, layers and date in the part of the address after the #, which browsers never send to a server. Saved places live only in your browser.
Every source
The living planet
Earthquakes
USGS Earthquake Hazards Program · Public domain (US Government) · Every 10 minutes · past 7 days · M2.5+
Small quakes far from seismometers are detected late or not at all. Early magnitudes are revised as more stations report.
Tropical and severe storms
NASA EONET (from JTWC, NHC and partner agencies) · Public domain (NASA) · Every 10 minutes · open events
Positions are the latest advisory, typically every 6 hours. The line is where it has been, not a forecast.
Volcanic activity
NASA EONET (from Smithsonian GVP and observatories) · Public domain (NASA) · Every 10 minutes · open events
Listed while an eruption or unrest report is open. Not every restless volcano is in the feed.
Named wildfires
NASA EONET (from IRWIN, InciWeb and partners) · Public domain (NASA) · Every 10 minutes · open events
Only fires an agency has named and reported. Most fires never get a name; see hotspots.
Fire hotspots (24 h)
NASA FIRMS (VIIRS NOAA-20, MODIS) · Public domain (NASA); cite FIRMS · Every 30 minutes · past 24 hours · binned to 0.2°
A hotspot is an unusually hot pixel seen from orbit. Most are fires or farm burns; some are gas flares, volcanoes or industry. Clouds hide fires.
Floods, ice, dust and more
NASA EONET · Public domain (NASA) · Every 10 minutes · open events
Icebergs, floods, dust storms and others as curated by NASA. Coverage is selective, not exhaustive.
Atmosphere and ocean
Surface wind (animated)
NOAA Global Forecast System (GFS) via NOMADS · Public domain (US Government) · Hourly · newest model run, step nearest now · 2° grid, interpolated
Weather-model output, not measurements, on a 2° grid. Shows the big circulation, not the breeze on your street.
Aurora nowcast
NOAA SWPC OVATION model, planetary K-index · Public domain (US Government) · Every 10 minutes · about 30 minutes ahead
A model of where aurora is likely overhead, drawn at 110 km. Clouds and daylight decide whether you see it.
Lightning (last 15 min)
NOAA GOES-19 and GOES-18 Geostationary Lightning Mappers · Public domain (US Government) · Every 3 minutes · 20-second satellite files · binned to 0.1°
Americas, Atlantic and eastern Pacific only: the open geostationary lightning sensors cover that half of the planet. White is the last two minutes; amber fades out over fifteen.
Clouds now (Americas)
NOAA GOES-East and GOES-West GeoColor via NASA GIBS · Public domain · Every 10 minutes · newest frame
Geostationary view of the Americas and Pacific only. Edges of the disk are stretched.
Rain and snowfall rate
NASA GPM IMERG via GIBS · Public domain (NASA) · Every 30 minutes · several hours behind
Satellite-estimated rates, a few hours old. Light drizzle and snow are underestimated.
Smoke, dust and haze
NASA MODIS combined aerosol optical depth via GIBS · Public domain (NASA) · Daily · follows the date slider
Particles in the whole air column, not ground-level air quality. Gaps where clouds blocked the view.
Sea surface temperature
NASA JPL GHRSST MUR via GIBS · Public domain (NASA) · Daily · about two days behind
Blended analysis of several satellites and buoys; it smooths small features.
Sea ice
NASA JPL GHRSST MUR sea ice concentration via GIBS · Public domain (NASA) · Daily · about two days behind
Concentration at roughly 25 km. Thin new ice and melt ponds are hard to see from orbit.
Snow cover
NOAA-20 VIIRS snow cover via GIBS · Public domain (NASA) · Daily · follows the date slider
Only where the satellite saw the ground through clear sky that day.
Power and internet
Power grids, live
NESO (GB), RTE eco2mix (France), AEMO (Australia), US EIA (when configured) · CC BY 4.0 · Licence Ouverte · AEMO permissions · public domain · Every 15 minutes
Only grid operators that publish live data openly. Colour is carbon intensity where published, otherwise the share from nuclear, wind, solar and hydro. Markers sit at a representative point for each region, not on the wires.
Internet outages (24 h)
IODA, Georgia Tech Internet Intelligence Lab · Free with attribution · Every 15 minutes · country level · last 24 hours
IODA infers outages from routing, active probing and traffic signals dropping below normal. It does not say why: shutdowns, power cuts, cable cuts and storms all look alike. Country level only.
Air and sea traffic
Civil aircraft
OpenSky Network, adsb.lol · OpenSky terms (non-commercial); ODbL (adsb.lol) · Every minute · moved forward in your browser between updates
Only aircraft that broadcast ADS-B and are within range of a volunteer receiver. Thinned from far out; zoom in for every contact.
Military aircraft
adsb.lol military flag · ODbL · Every minute
Most military aircraft do not broadcast. Those shown chose to, or are transiting civil airspace.
Civilian ships
Fintraffic Digitraffic AIS · CC BY 4.0 · Every 2 minutes
Open AIS coverage is regional (northern Baltic). Leisure craft are left out.
Military and government ships
Fintraffic Digitraffic AIS (ship type 35 or 55) · CC BY 4.0 · Every 2 minutes
Warships usually switch AIS off. This is a small self-declared subset, never a navy’s picture.
Space
Upcoming launch pads
Launch Library 2 (The Space Devs) · Free tier, attribution · Hourly · next 20 launches
Launch times slip often. “No earlier than” means exactly that.
Ground reports
Reported fighting
UCDP Candidate Events · CC BY 4.0 · Periodic releases
Reported events with a named published source. Not live troop positions. An empty map is not proof of peace.
Military installations
OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL · Weekly
Where facilities are mapped, not who or how many are there. Mapping is incomplete.
What is not here
No classified information. No registration lookups, operator databases or photo scrapes attached to contacts. No prediction of where an aircraft is going. No ground vehicles or convoys: real-time public tracking of those does not exist, and a page pretending otherwise would be inventing data.