Northern lights, fog, red skies, wildlife and bioluminescence: Zoom Alerts combines all the relevant data sources and gives you one simple answer: should I grab my camera tonight?
Available in the Netherlands and most of Europe · in English and Dutch.
The app is actively developed by a photographer, for photographers. Your feedback and experiences directly help make Zoom Alerts better.
The Photography meter
Calculated from the odds of northern lights, fog, red skies, bioluminescence and special wildlife, weighted by cloud cover, precipitation, wind and visibility.
Above 70: "Great night for photography." Below 30: "A tough night." No false promises, just a sober, data-driven assessment.
Set a threshold and your phone buzzes when conditions look good. No spam: nature doesn't keep office hours.
"Had the app installed for a while now and it has already earned me a few great photo moments. Ground fog once, a kingfisher in the park and noctilucent clouds. How great is that?! And no, not everything pans out exactly, but Zoom Alerts honestly gives you the percentages. With a bit of luck this app gets you the most beautiful shots!"
"Thanks to this app I have already made several beautiful shots. Being in the most beautiful spots at the right moment is half the work."
New since launch
The AR compass is now the AR sky. Besides the sun, moon, planets and shooting stars, it shows the bright stars and the constellations Orion, the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia and Leo, plus telephoto targets such as the Pleiades, the Orion Nebula and the Andromeda Galaxy. With a red night mode for the dark.
What you can see from your spot over the next thirty days: full and new moon, the supermoon, conjunctions, planets at their best and eclipses. Conjunctions and planets come with time, direction and altitude, an eclipse with its time window.
New under Astronomy: Conjunctions and planets, for a striking conjunction and for Venus, Mars or Jupiter at their best, and Eclipse, the day before. Under Supermoon and full moon you get a nudge when the full moon rises around sunset. The Discover tab shows a banner as well.
Star the places where you often shoot in the location picker. Your favourites appear at the top, and one tap shows the conditions there again.
The maps icon at the top right shows all nine maps as tiles, with the AR sky as a tile of its own. The icon also sits on every map, so one tap switches maps.
The Nature tab shows wildlife and fungi across Europe. Choose which groups you see, in the Netherlands also by rarity, and tap Example photo to see a Zoom.nl member's photo on Zoom.nl.
Five phenomena, one app
No more hopping between four apps and three websites. The aurora odds in Lapland are different from those in the Low Countries: Zoom Alerts knows, and factors it in. And the app now works anywhere in Europe, in English and Dutch.
Real-time solar wind, the aurora model and hourly local cloud cover. Look three nights ahead with viewing odds, clouds and storm probability per night. Plus moon phase, meteor showers, noctilucent clouds, a Sky calendar for the next thirty days and the AR sky with planets, stars, constellations and the radiant of shooting stars.
Fog probability by type, a red-sky score built from fifteen factors, golden and blue hour, and a thunderstorm map that looks ahead hour by hour up to twelve hours: where will the showers be, and where does the sky turn photogenic? All filtered through a photographer's eyes.
Wildlife and fungi recently spotted around your location, in the Netherlands and across the rest of Europe. Choose your groups, in the Netherlands also by rarity, search and keep your favourites.
The magical blue glow of bioluminescent plankton, calculated from water temperature, moon phase, wind and, along the Dutch coast, the tide. Including sightings reported by other users.
All maps in one overview: a sharp cloud map per layer with Red sky, rain radar with a forecast up to 24 hours, a fog map with visibility and forecast, the hour-by-hour thunderstorm map, light pollution in the original atlas colors, a sun & moon compass, the AR sky and live sightings of northern lights and bioluminescence. The icon on every map switches maps in one tap. Find the right time window and the right spot.
A look inside the app
A few places in the app, exactly as you see them on your phone.
The AR sky on 13 December at 23:00: Orion with Betelgeuse, Rigel and the Orion Nebula.
One tap on the moon icon turns the whole screen red, so your eyes stay used to the dark.
What you can see from your spot over the next thirty days, here in November from Vogelenzang.
Nine maps as tiles, with the AR sky as a tile of its own.
At a glance
| Feature | What you see | Outlook & coverage |
|---|---|---|
| Aurora | Viewing chance from live solar wind and Kp, latitude-aware | 3 nights ahead · all of Europe |
| Fog | Chance per type (radiation, valley, evaporation, advection) plus measured visibility | Up to 12 hours ahead · all of Europe |
| Thunderstorms | Showers, storm setup and photogenic structure | Hourly up to 12 hours ahead · all of Europe |
| Rain | Real radar and a seamless model forecast | Up to 24 hours ahead · all of Europe |
| Clouds | Total, high, mid and low, plus the Red sky layer | Up to 24 hours ahead · all of Europe |
| Red skies | A score for every sunrise and sunset, with a clear-horizon check | Your location |
| Milky Way & night | Darkness, moon phase and light pollution in atlas colors | Tonight · all of Europe |
| Sea sparkle | Bloom chance based on seawater temperature | Tonight · European coast |
| Noctilucent clouds & meteors | NLC signals in season and the shower calendar | Tonight · everywhere |
| Sky calendar | Moon phases, conjunctions, planets at their best and eclipses | 30 days ahead · everywhere |
| Nature | Recent sightings of wildlife and fungi near you | Live · all of Europe |
| AR sky | Sun, moon, planets, stars, constellations and shooting stars through your camera, with a red night mode | Any moment · everywhere |
| Alerts | Push when chances look good and at sky highlights, with thresholds, quiet hours and a pause button | Automatic · your location |
| Camera advice | Suggested settings per phenomenon | With every chance |
Under the hood
Official measurement networks and weather models across Europe, for weather, aurora, water and nature.
An automated pipeline collects all the data (weather and aurora up to every hour) and stores it in a caching layer. The app stays fast, even on a weak connection.
Sun and moon calculated astronomically, fog from multiple meteorological parameters, red skies from fifteen factors. No simplistic if-then rules.
Zoom Alerts is on the App Store and Google Play across most of Europe. It is under active development: since launch it gained forward-looking maps for all of Europe, the AR sky with stars and constellations, a Sky calendar, fungi in the Nature tab, a pause button for alerts and full bilingual support, driven by what users report. Do tell us what you run into in the field.
Available in the Netherlands and most of Europe · in English and Dutch.
Make sure you never wake up feeling you missed something again.
Zoom Alerts