AstroSpherePrivacy Policy
Last updated 26 October 2026
- We collect only what’s needed to run your account, your posts and the tools.
- No adverts, no selling or renting your data, and no tracking across other apps.
- Location, camera and photos are only used when you choose to use those features.
- You can make your account private, choose your notifications, turn crash reports off, and delete your account from the app at any time.
Who we are
AstroSphere is run by Martyn Clarkson, an independent developer based in the United Kingdom. Martyn Clarkson is the data controller for your personal information.
Contact: support@astro-sphere.co.uk
What we collect
| Data | Examples | Why we need it |
|---|---|---|
| Account | Email, full name, display name and your unique @username. Your password is handled by our sign-in provider (Firebase Authentication) and we never see it. If you use Google or Sign in with Apple, the name and email they share (Apple may give a private relay address). | To create and secure your account, and contact you about it |
| Date of birth | Asked at sign-up (and once for existing accounts). Stored in a private area that only you can read and never shown to anyone. Your profile only holds an “age verified” flag. | To confirm you’re 13 or over (legal age requirement) |
| Profile | Display name, profile photo, bio, wallpaper and gallery images, country (taken from your phone’s region setting, which you can change), private/public setting | To show your profile to other members |
| Content you post | Photos (taken with your camera or chosen from your library, only the ones you pick), captions, categories, comments, replies, likes, reposts, tagged equipment, launch links and @mentions of other members | To publish your posts and conversations |
| Equipment and observing | Your equipment and saved setups (other members can see them, as described below), your Messier observing log (private to you), and any catalogue suggestions you send us | To run the tools and your gear tags |
| Connections and Squads | Crewmates and crewmate requests, who you follow and who follows you, Squads you own, join or ask to join (name, description, picture, owner, moderators, members, join requests), and people you’ve blocked | To build your feed and run Squads |
| Safety | Reports you make and reports about your content (who reported, what and whose content, the reason and details, a copy of the reported text or image link, and the review outcome), blocks and moderation decisions | To keep AstroSphere safe and deal with abuse |
| Location (optional) | Only if you tap “Use my current location”: your phone’s location (precise or approximate, your choice in iOS). The coordinates and place name are saved only on your device, never on our servers. The one exception is Sky Forecast: to fetch your forecast, the app sends an approximate location, rounded to about 5 km, to our server, which passes it to Open-Meteo. Forecasts for each rounded location are kept for up to an hour so nearby members share them; they aren’t linked to you. To show a place name, your phone’s built-in map service (Apple on iPhone, Google on Android) receives the coordinates. You can type a location instead. | To calculate what’s in your sky |
| Notifications | Your in-app notifications (who, to whom, type, the linked post, comment or Squad, time and read status) and your notification settings. If you turn on push notifications: a push token for each phone you’re signed in on, which lets us deliver notifications to that phone (it’s deleted when you sign out or delete your account). If you ask to be reminded about a launch: which launch, whether you want the reminder 1 hour or 30 minutes before, and your phone’s time zone. | To show you activity that involves you, and to send the push notifications and launch reminders you ask for |
| Subscription | If you subscribe to AstroSphere Tools, Apple (App Store) or Google (Google Play) takes the payment and we never see your card details. Our subscription service, RevenueCat, receives your AstroSphere user ID and your purchase history from the store (which plan, when it started and renews, trials, cancellations and refunds), and records any free access we give you, such as lifetime access for testers. | To unlock the tools you’ve paid for, restore purchases on a new phone, and give free access |
| On your device only | Your saved location, tool settings, filters, display preferences, content you’ve reported (kept hidden for you), and caches such as an offline copy of data, images and the photo of the Sun. These stay on your phone and are removed when you delete the app. | To make the app quick and work offline |
| Crash reports | If the app crashes or hits an error, a crash report: what went wrong in the app’s code, the time, the app version, your phone model and iOS version, free memory and storage, and a random installation ID. Reports are not linked to your account: we don’t attach your name, email, username or user ID, and we remove email addresses, IDs and text you’ve written from error messages before they’re sent. You can turn this off in Settings (“Send crash reports”). | To find and fix bugs and crashes |
We don’t collect your contacts, your browsing outside the app, advertising identifiers or analytics, and we don’t track you across other companies’ apps or websites.
Phone permissions
AstroSphere asks for each permission only when you use the feature that needs it:
- Location: “While Using the App” only. iOS shows standard wording about “Always”, but AstroSphere never asks for it.
- Camera: when you choose Take photo.
- Photos: when you choose Choose from library.
- Notifications: only after you tap Turn on in AstroSphere’s own “Stay in the loop” message (or later in Notification settings). You can choose which types reach you, or turn them off completely.
AstroSphere never asks for permission to track you. You can change any permission at any time in iPhone Settings → AstroSphere.
Who can see your information
- Public accounts: your profile, posts, equipment, saved setups and connections are visible to signed-in AstroSphere members, except anyone you have blocked.
- Private accounts: only people you approve (your crewmates) can see your posts, equipment and saved setups. Posts you make in a public Squad are the exception: everyone who can see that Squad can see them, and the app tells you this before you post. Your display name and profile photo stay visible so people can find you.
- Squads: posts in a private Squad are visible only to its members. Posts in a public Squad are visible to all signed-in members and can appear in the main Sky Feed. A Squad’s owner chooses which it is, and posts made while a Squad was private stay members-only if it later goes public. Squad owners and moderators can see who has asked to join.
- Reposts: members can repost public posts with their own comment, and your original then appears inside their post. Posts from private accounts can’t be reposted, and Squad posts can only be reposted inside the same Squad. If you delete your post, reposts show “This post is no longer available”.
- Photo links: photos are stored at long, unguessable web links. Anyone who has the exact link can open the photo, but the links aren’t listed or searchable.
- @usernames and mentions: your @username is shown on your profile and can be searched by signed-in members. If someone mentions you with your @username, you’re notified only if you can see that post or comment.
- Never shown to other members: your email, your date of birth and your phone’s location. (The place you choose to put on your profile is shown.)
Our legal basis
Under UK GDPR we use your data on these bases:
- Contract: to provide the service you signed up for.
- Legitimate interests: safety, moderation, preventing abuse, and keeping the service secure and working.
- Consent: location, camera and photos. You can withdraw consent at any time in the app or in iPhone Settings.
- Legal obligation: age requirements and responding to lawful requests.
Services we use
These providers process data for us, only on our instructions:
- Google Firebase (Google LLC / Google Ireland Ltd): sign-in (Authentication), database (Firestore), file storage and server functions. The database is hosted in London, UK. Some server functions, such as deleting a Squad and account clean-up, run in the United States; push notifications and launch reminders are sent from London.
- Firebase Crashlytics (Google): receives crash reports, as described above, unless you turn them off. Google keeps crash reports for 90 days.
- Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google) and Apple Push Notification service (Apple): deliver push notifications, if you turn them on. They receive your phone’s push token and the notification itself (for example a member’s display name and “liked your post”, or a launch name and countdown), never your email or date of birth.
- Google Sign-In and Sign in with Apple: optional ways to sign in. If you use them, Google or Apple shares your name and email with us.
- Open-Meteo (Switzerland): weather data for Sky Forecast. It receives only an approximate location (rounded to about 5 km) from our server, never your name or account details.
- RevenueCat (RevenueCat, Inc., USA): manages AstroSphere Tools subscriptions and free access. It receives your AstroSphere user ID and purchase history, never your name, email or card details.
- Google Maps: maps of launch pads on the Launches pages. These maps never show your position. Tapping a map link opens Apple Maps or Google Maps.
- Apple and Google built-in place lookup: your phone’s own map service turns your location into a place name, on your device.
- YouTube: some NASA Pictures of the Day are videos (their thumbnails come from YouTube). If you tap play, the video runs in the YouTube player and YouTube/Google may collect data under Google’s privacy policy.
Our servers also fetch content without sending any of your personal data: NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day; NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory images via Helioviewer.org; and launch data, including launch weather, from The Space Devs (Launch Library 2). The app then loads these images from our storage or from NASA. Astronomy images used by the tools are hosted by us; see Image credits.
Some providers may store data outside the UK. Where they do, they are covered by appropriate safeguards such as the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or an adequacy decision.
We don’t sell your data, share it with advertisers, or use it to profile you for marketing.
How long we keep it
We keep your data while your account is open. When you delete your account (you’ll be asked to sign in again first), we delete:
- your posts and reposts, with their comments, photos and notifications
- your comments (a comment with replies becomes “This comment was deleted”, with no author), likes, follows, crewmates and requests
- notifications to or from you, all your photos, gear, setups, Messier log and blocks
- your date of birth, your sign-in account and your profile, including your @username (which then becomes free for someone else)
- your push tokens and launch reminders
If you used Sign in with Apple, we revoke it. We also delete your record at RevenueCat. Deleting your account doesn’t cancel an App Store or Google Play subscription: cancel it in your store account settings first. Squads you own pass to a moderator or member, or are deleted if you’re the only member. Other people’s reposts of your posts show “This post is no longer available”.
Crash reports are deleted automatically after 90 days. We don’t keep backups: deleted data is gone from our database within about an hour. We keep reports filed by or about you for up to 12 months after they’re resolved, for safety, and catalogue suggestions you sent are kept in anonymised form. Data saved on your phone stays there until you delete the app.
If someone under 13 tries to sign up, the account is removed straight away and the date of birth isn’t kept.
Your rights
You can edit your profile, delete posts, change your privacy setting, turn notifications off and delete your account from inside the app. Under UK GDPR you also have the right to:
- ask for a copy of your data
- ask us to correct or delete it
- object to or restrict how we use it
- ask for your data in a portable format
Email support@astro-sphere.co.uk to use any of these rights. We’ll respond within one month. If you’re unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.
Deleting your account
In the app, tap the gear icon on SkyFeed and choose Settings → Delete account, or go to Edit Profile → Delete account. If you can’t sign in, email us from the address linked to your account and we’ll delete it for you.
Children
AstroSphere is for people aged 13 and over. We ask for your date of birth when you sign up and don’t allow accounts for under-13s. If we learn that a child under 13 has an account, we’ll delete it. Contact us if you think this has happened.
Security
Data is sent over encrypted connections and stored with our hosting provider’s security controls. No service can be completely secure, so please use a strong, unique password.
This website
This website doesn’t use cookies. We use Vercel Web Analytics to count visits to these web pages (such as which pages are viewed, the referring site, and your country and device type). It doesn’t use cookies, doesn’t identify you, and isn’t used inside the app. To display the page, your browser loads fonts from Google Fonts, the App Store badge from Apple and the Google Play badge from Google.
Changes to this policy
If we make significant changes we’ll tell you in the app before they take effect. The date at the top shows when this policy was last updated.