Privacy policy

The short version

You can use Sky Time without an account. If you make an account we keep your email address, a hashed password, your display preferences and the sky ratings you submit. There is no advertising on the website or in the apps at present (section 8a). We do not sell your email address, your ratings or your account details. The app's camera view never sends us anything on its own: what the camera sees stays on your phone, and a picture you choose to save goes to your own photo library and nowhere else. The one exception is a tester's choice to send an aurora camera run to us to help tune that mode (section 7a). Where the app uses your location it sends as little of it as will do, and much of the work - the stars, the satellites, the copy it keeps for when you are offline - happens on the phone itself. You can delete your account yourself at any time, in the app or on the website - see Delete your account.

1. Who we are

Sky Time is a small site, and a pair of phone apps, that predict sunset, sunrise and aurora quality for photographers. This policy covers the website and the Android and iOS apps alike. It is a product of Logical Rich Solutions, LLC, which operates it and is the controller of the personal data described on this page. Questions about anything here can be sent through our contact form, or emailed to contact@skytime.earth.

2. If you just visit

Browsing forecasts and location pages requires no account. For visitors we hold only ordinary web server logs kept by our host, which include your IP address, the pages requested and your browser's user-agent string. These are a normal part of running a web server and are used for security and troubleshooting.

We also count page views ourselves, to know which pages are read and where visitors come from: the day, the page, the site that linked to it, the country your connection is in, and a code that stands for the visitor. That code is made from your IP address and browser through a secret that changes every day, so it cannot follow you from one day to the next, and the IP address itself is never stored by this count. No analytics company is involved.

The website shows no advertising. There are no social media embeds.

3. If you make an account

We store:

• Your email address, and whether you have confirmed it.
• A hashed password - hashed with a one-way function, so we cannot read it, recover it, or tell you what it is. If you sign in with Google instead, we store no password at all.
• If you use Google sign-in: the account identifier Google gives us, your email address, and your display name. We never receive or ask for your Google password, and we ask Google for nothing beyond your basic profile and email.
• Your preferences - light or dark theme, your home location, and any locations you pin to your dashboard.
• The dates you save - each a day and a place, shown on My Calendar. Nothing is sent from them.
• What you follow - a kind of event at one of your places. We add what matches to My Calendar for you, and take it off again when you stop following. Following where you are happens on your phone alone: the app uses your location there and does not send it to us. If you use your calendar link (for Google, Apple or Outlook Calendar), anyone who has that link can read your Sky Time calendar; you can make a new link at any time, which stops the old one working.
• Your sky ratings, including any notes and the time you said the sky looked best, along with when you submitted them.
• Sign-in records - when you last signed in, and, if you tick "remember me", a token and the browser user-agent it was issued to, so you can be signed out of a specific device.

4. Why we hold it, and for how long

The email address exists so you can sign in, so we can confirm the address is yours, and so you can reset a forgotten password. Preferences exist to make the site remember what you chose. Ratings exist because they are the point of the site: they are what the forecast model learns from, which is described in section 6.

Account data is kept while the account exists and is deleted when it is deleted. Confirmation and password-reset links expire on their own - 48 hours and one hour respectively - and are purged after a week. "Remember me" tokens expire after 30 days and are destroyed whenever you sign out or change your password. Server logs are kept by our host on its own schedule.

4a. If you test Sky Time for us

People who agree to try new versions before everybody else are on a testers list: their email address, a name and a short note if they gave us one (such as the phone they test on), and which of our tester emails went to them. What they send back through the feedback link is kept with it, along with the phone or browser they chose to mention. We use it only to write to them about testing and to fix what they find. Every tester email has a link to stop them; stopping keeps the feedback already sent, and asking us through the contact page removes the lot.

5. Anti-abuse records

When someone signs up, asks for a password reset or requests a new confirmation link, we briefly record the email address and IP address involved so the same address or machine cannot be used to send large volumes of mail to someone else. These records are deleted after 24 hours and are used for nothing else.

6. How your ratings are used

When you rate how a sky actually looked, that rating is compared against what the model predicted and is used to correct it, both overall and for that specific location. This is the mechanism the site runs on and there is no way to use the rating features without it happening.

Ratings are stored against your account so you can revise your own. Where several people have rated the same event, the site shows a combined figure rather than individual ratings. Administrators can see who submitted which rating, because a rating that nobody is accountable for is not usable as training data.

7. Your location

We never read your device's location unless you explicitly ask us to, by pressing the location control and granting your browser's permission prompt. When you do, the coordinates are used to find nearby forecast locations for that request. They are not stored against your account and not sent to any third party beyond the geocoding lookup described below.

7a. Your camera, in the app

The app has a sky view that shows the camera picture with the Sun, Moon and Milky Way drawn over it, so you can see where they will be. It uses the camera only while that view is open and only after you grant the phone's camera permission. The picture is drawn straight to the screen. It is not recorded unless you start a video yourself (below), not analysed, and not sent to us or to anyone else - no frame, still or clip ever leaves the device unless you save one yourself, as described next, or, as a tester, choose to send us a run, and we have no way to see what your camera sees. Closing the view stops the camera. You can revoke the permission at any time in your phone's settings; the rest of the app works without it.

Video mode. Where the app offers Video in the sky view's camera menu, it records only between your pressing record and stop, with the drawings over the picture or without them, as you choose. Along with the clip it keeps which way the phone was pointing, so the drawings can be added when you play it back. The clip and that pointing are saved on your phone, in the app's gallery or your photo library, and are not uploaded to us or to anyone else. You can delete a clip at any time.

Sending an aurora camera run (testers only). Expert testers who use the Aurora camera mode may press Send this run to help tune the aurora camera after a shot. Only then, and never automatically, the app uploads that run to our server: the frames the camera stacked (up to about 120 MB), the finished picture, the time, which way the phone pointed, the app's own measurements of the shot, the app version and the phone model, and the place rounded to about a kilometre (0.01°). We add what the aurora and the cloud were doing there at that minute. Runs are kept outside the website, seen only by our administrators to tune the camera, never shared or sold, and deleted after 90 days (a run never finished, after a day). You can delete a run you sent at any time, in the app.

Saving a picture. The view has a camera button. When you press it, the app saves one still - what the camera sees at that moment with the sky markings drawn over it - to your phone's own photo library, and only there. Nothing is saved unless you press the button, and nothing is saved anywhere but on your device: the picture is not sent to us, not stored on our servers, not analysed, and not shared with anyone. It is an ordinary photo in your library from then on, under your phone's own rules - you can delete it there, and if you share it, that is you sharing it. On phones that ask, the app requests permission to add to your photo library only at the moment you first press the button. We do not read your photo library; the permission is used to write that one picture.

The same view uses the phone's motion and orientation sensors (the compass, gyroscope and accelerometer) to know which way you are pointing it, and your location, if you allow it, to place the sky correctly. Those readings are used on the device for that purpose alone and are not stored or transmitted.

If you take a photograph with your phone's own camera app while the view is open, that is the phone's camera app and your photo library doing the work, under your phone's own rules - nothing about it comes to us either.

7b. Your location, in the app

The app reads your phone's location only if you allow it, and only to show the sky and the forecast for where you are - on its pages, in the sky view, and in a widget or alerts you have set to "where I am". You can revoke the permission at any time in your phone's settings; the app then works from the places you choose.

What reaches us. When you look at where you are, the app sends us your coordinates rounded to about 100 metres, to answer that request. The widget, the alerts and the offline copy, which refresh on their own a few times a day, send less: the name of the nearest place we already track, if one is within about 20 km, or otherwise your coordinates rounded to about 5 km. If the aircraft layer of the sky view has to come to us (see "Aircraft fetched by your phone" below), it sends your coordinates rounded to about 100 metres; we ask the aircraft source only for the area around a grid square, never your own position. None of these is stored against your account.

Aircraft fetched by your phone. With the aircraft layer of the sky view turned on, the app asks adsb.lol, a public network of aircraft receivers, for the aircraft around you, straight from your phone, every ten seconds or so while the view is open. adsb.lol then receives your phone's IP address and a point rounded to about 11 km - never your exact position - and nothing about your account; its own privacy policy covers what it does with a request. If it does not answer, the app asks us instead, as above.

Kept on your phone. So that it opens quickly and still works without a connection, the app keeps recent forecasts, upcoming events, the satellites' orbits and similar answers on your phone, up to a fixed size, and works out the space station's position and the star map on the phone itself. This stays in the app's own storage, is not sent anywhere, and is removed when you clear the app's storage or uninstall it.

7c. Crash reports and error counts, from the app

When the app crashes, or something goes wrong (no connection, a server error, an answer it could not read), it notes it on your phone and sends the notes to skytime.earth the next time it starts. They come to our own server, not to any other company, and we use them only to find and fix faults.

What a crash report holds: when it happened, the app's version, the Android version, your phone's make and model, the part of the app that failed (the error's type, its message and a technical trace of up to 16 KB). An error count holds: a day, the same versions and phone, and how many times each kind of problem happened that day.

What they never hold: your location, your account, your email address or anything you typed. The app removes web addresses, coordinates and email addresses from error messages before it saves them, and we do not record which account or which internet address sent a report. We keep them for 90 days.

Turning them off: in the app, Settings → Privacy (or Account → Privacy). Reports already on your phone are then not sent.

8. Who else sees anything

We do not sell personal data and we do not share it for anyone else's marketing. A small number of services necessarily handle it in order for the site to work:

• Resend delivers our email. It receives the address we are writing to and the contents of that message - confirmation links, password resets and similar, and our emails to testers.
• Google, only if you choose to sign in with Google. That exchange is between you and Google; we receive the profile details listed in section 3.
• Our server provider hosts the site's database and keeps the server logs in section 2.

Forecasts are worked out on our own server from public weather models (NOAA, ECMWF, DWD and other national weather services, through Open-Meteo's open data, with MET Norway as a fallback), and place names and searches are answered from our own copy of GeoNames, so neither involves sending anything about you to anyone. The server also fetches space-weather data and the aurora forecast from NOAA SWPC, observed cloud from NOAA's GOES satellites and EUMETSAT's Meteosat (through the EUMETSAT Data Store), the cloud now from the weather satellites, through NASA's GIBS (GOES, Himawari) and EUMETSAT (Meteosat), the satellite map's pictures from the USGS and NASA (Blue Marble), passed on through our server so neither sees your address, weather radar from NOAA (the MRMS mosaic of the NEXRAD network) and EUMETNET (the OPERA composite of the European radars), hurricane and tropical storm forecasts from NOAA's National Hurricane Center and the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, camera stills through the Windy Webcams API and the public streams of webcams hosted on IPCamLive, used only to check our forecasts and not shown to anyone, rocket launches from The Space Devs, satellite orbits from CelesTrak, ground heights from AWS's public Terrain Tiles and aircraft positions from adsb.lol - requests made on its own behalf that carry nothing about you. NOAA's aurora picture is copied to our own server, so your browser never asks NOAA for it.

Some things are loaded by your own browser or phone, so that service sees your IP address the way any website you visit does: the maps - map tiles from OpenFreeMap, when you open a map, and for the sky map under the front page's card and the aurora maps, which wait for your answer where we ask first (section 10), and in the app the aircraft around you (section 7b).

If Logical Rich Solutions, LLC or the site is sold, merged or reorganised, the information described here may pass to the new owner, who will be bound by this policy for what was collected under it.

We may also disclose information where we are legally required to, or where it is necessary to investigate abuse of the site.

8a. Advertising

Neither the website nor the apps show advertising at present, and no advertising partner receives anything about you. If that changes, this section will describe the advertising and your choices about it before any ad appears.

9. Your choices

You can change your email preferences and delete your ratings from your account pages. Ask us through the contact form or at contact@skytime.earth and we will, on request: tell you what we hold about you, correct anything wrong, delete your account and its ratings, or send you a copy of your data. We aim to answer within 30 days and will not charge you for it.

Depending on where you live - for example in the UK, the European Economic Area or California - you may have these rights in law rather than merely as a matter of our policy, including the right to complain to your data protection regulator. We apply them to everyone regardless.

Note that the site is hosted in the United States, so using it means your data is handled there.

10. Cookies, and your choice about them

The cookies this site sets itself are strictly necessary, and none is used for tracking:

• A session cookie keeps you signed in while you browse, and disappears when you close your browser.
• A “remember me” cookie, set only if you tick that box, lasting 30 days and holding a random token - not your password or your email. Signing out deletes it.
• A short-lived cookie during Google sign-in, which exists only to check that the reply coming back is the one we sent for, and is deleted the moment sign-in finishes.
• A cookie recording your answer below, holding one word and nothing that identifies you.

Because those are necessary, the law in most places does not require us to ask permission for them. The maps also deserve asking about: their tiles come from OpenFreeMap, and your browser fetches them directly, so that service sees your IP address the way it would if you had visited it. A map you open yourself is something you have asked for by opening it; the sky map under the front page's card and the aurora maps load on their own, so those wait for your answer.

So visitors in the UK, the EU and the EEA are shown a bar offering that choice, and no map loads on its own until it is answered. Choosing “essentials only” means those maps stay folded away - each can still be shown with a press - and the rest of the site works exactly as before. You can change your mind at any time through Cookie choices in the footer of every page - saying no is as revisitable as saying yes. Whether to show the bar is decided from your browser's own timezone setting, because looking up your location would mean sending your IP address to another company to ask whether you mind your IP address being sent to other companies.

11. Security

The site is served over HTTPS. Passwords are stored only as one-way hashes. Confirmation and reset links are stored hashed as well, so a copy of our database would not yield working links. No system is perfectly secure and we cannot guarantee absolute security, but if a breach affects your data we will tell you.

12. Children

This site is not directed at children under 13, we do not knowingly collect their data, and we do not knowingly allow personalised advertising to them. If you believe a child has created an account, write to us and we will remove it.

13. Changes

This policy may change. The revised version takes effect when posted here with the date at the top updated. If a change materially affects how we use data you have already given us, we will email account holders rather than relying on you noticing this page.

14. Contact

Privacy questions, data requests and deletion requests go through our contact form or straight to contact@skytime.earth. Both reach the site's operator directly. See also our terms of use and disclaimer.