Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 30, 2026

This Privacy Policy describes how ARIS ASTRO LLC, a Utah limited liability company, 1042 E Fort Union Blvd PMB 1078, Midvale, UT 84047 (“ARIS,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, uses, and protects information when you use the ARIS mobile application, website, web application, and related services (collectively, the “Service”).

Information We Collect

Account Information

When you create an ARIS account, we collect:

Email address — used for authentication and account recovery.
Display name — optional. Used within the app, and shown to other signed-in ARIS users alongside your contributions if you join a Community Mission leaderboard.
Authentication provider — whether you signed in with Google, Apple, or email/password.

We support anonymous (guest) accounts. You can use core features without providing any personal information. Creating a full account unlocks cloud sync and additional features.

Payment Information

If you purchase a paid plan, payments are processed by Stripe. Your card details go directly to Stripe and are never stored on our servers — we store only a Stripe customer reference and your plan and subscription status.

Equipment Profiles

Your ARIS data syncs through Firebase Firestore and Firebase Storage so it follows you across devices: equipment profiles (device names, driver configurations, imaging parameters), app settings and layout preferences, saved rigs, target lists, and horizon and panorama profiles.

Most of this is equipment configuration. Some of it describes your observing site, including its coordinates and any name you gave it — see Observing Site Location.

Panorama and Horizon Uploads

The 360° panorama and horizon-capture features use your phone or tablet camera, not your telescope camera. When you run a capture, the frames you take and the stitched result are uploaded to Firebase Storage under your account so that our stitching service can process them and return the finished panorama and horizon profile. These uploads are optional — they happen only when you choose to run a capture — and they are deleted with your account.

Observing Site Location

When you run a panorama or horizon capture, we record the coordinates of the observing site alongside that job, so the stitching service can associate the result with a location and so the resulting horizon is correct for your site. The coordinates come from your device’s location if you have granted permission, and otherwise from the site location you configured in the app. They are written to your own job record in Firestore and sent to our stitching service.

If no real position is available, no coordinates are recorded at all — the app never substitutes a default placeholder. Location is used only in this flow: ARIS does not track your location in the background, or while you are simply using the app.

Error Reports

The app contains crash-reporting code (Sentry) that is switched off in the builds we publish. It activates only in a build we deliberately configure with a reporting key, which today means our own internal development builds. The builds you install from the App Store, Google Play, or our website carry no reporting key, so they send nothing.

When reporting is active and something breaks, a report is sent containing the technical state at the moment of failure:

Device type and operating system version.
App version.
Stack trace and error context.
General device state (memory, battery level).
Sampled performance timings (how long screens and requests take).

A screenshot of the app at the moment of failure may be attached in our internal development builds only — published builds never attach screenshots.

Reports are sent only when an error actually occurs. This is not analytics, and it does not track your use of the app. If crash reporting is ever enabled in a published build, we will say so in the app and give you a way to turn it off.

Community Missions Contributions

Community Missions is opt-in. If you join a mission and contribute imaging time, the frames your telescope captures for that mission are uploaded to our storage (Cloudflare R2) so they can be reviewed and included in the shared dataset, along with a record of which account contributed them. This is the one flow in which your telescope’s own frames leave your premises, and it happens only for missions you choose to join.

Your display name, if you set one, is shown to other signed-in ARIS users alongside your contributions on mission and global leaderboards.

Remote Access, Rig Status, and Notifications

If you claim a rig for remote access, we store the registration and provision a secure tunnel (Cloudflare) so you can reach your own observatory from outside your network. Claimed rigs send us a periodic heartbeat so the app can show whether they are online.

When a sequence finishes, stalls, or is stopped, your rig sends us a short event summary — the target name, project name, frame counts, filter, and the reason it stopped — so we can show status in the app and send you a push notification. To deliver those notifications your device registers a push token with Firebase Cloud Messaging and subscribes to updates for your own rigs.

We do not receive your image data through any of this. Routine commands and live telemetry between the app and your rig stay on your own network; what reaches us is the summary described above.

The Website and Waitlist

If you join the waitlist at arisastro.com, we collect the email address you enter, an optional first name, and the optional hardware survey (mount, camera, focuser, and a description of your current setup). We use it to invite you to early access, to shape beta cohorts, and to build a public compatibility roadmap. We email you about ARIS and nothing else, and you can ask us to remove you at any time.

Alongside a waitlist submission we may also record how you arrived: any utm_ campaign parameters in the link you followed, the referring site if you came from another domain, and which page you landed on. This is first-touch only, kept in your browser’s sessionStorage, and sent only if you actually submit the form. It uses no cookies, no third-party services, and no identifier of any kind — if you never submit, it is discarded when you close the tab.

If you follow a creator or affiliate link containing a ?via= code, that code is stored in your browser’s localStorage for up to 60 days so the creator can be credited if you later subscribe. It is attached to your checkout session and nothing else. It identifies the creator, not you.

The website runs no analytics. There is no analytics product, no tracking pixel, no advertising identifier, and no third-party script that observes your browsing. Page requests are served through Cloudflare, which processes standard web-request data as our content-delivery provider.

Information We Do Not Collect

We want to be explicit about what we do not collect:

Your routine astrophotography. Frames captured by your telescope camera during ordinary imaging are written to your own rig’s storage and your local device. We do not upload, access, or process them. Two features are exceptions, and both are opt-in: Community Missions, where frames you contribute to a shared survey are uploaded to us, and panorama and horizon capture, which uses your phone camera.
Background or continuous location. ARIS does not follow your movements, run location in the background, or record where you are while you use the app. Site coordinates are collected only in the capture flow described under Observing Site Location above.
Usage analytics. We do not track which screens you visit, how long you use the app, or your interaction patterns. The app ships with no analytics product of any kind, and the website runs none either.
Live equipment telemetry. The commands you send to your equipment and the live telemetry that comes back stay on your own network, between the app and your rig. The exceptions are the sequence-event summary and rig heartbeat described under Remote Access, Rig Status, and Notifications above — neither carries image data.

How We Use Your Information

We use collected information for the following purposes:

Authentication and account management — to let you sign in and manage your account.
Cross-device sync — to sync your equipment profiles across your devices.
Error diagnosis — to identify and fix bugs and crashes.
Service communication — to contact you about critical service updates (rare, only when necessary).

We do not sell, rent, or share your personal information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Third-Party Services

ARIS uses the following third-party services:

Service	Purpose	Data Shared	Privacy Policy
Firebase Authentication	User sign-in	Email, auth provider	Google Privacy Policy
Firebase Firestore	Cross-device sync of your ARIS data	Equipment profiles, app settings, saved rigs, target lists, and panorama-stitch jobs including observing-site coordinates	Google Privacy Policy
Firebase Cloud Messaging	Push notifications about your rig	A push registration token for your device	Google Privacy Policy
Stripe	Subscription payments	Email, payment details (collected by Stripe directly — we never see your card number)	Stripe Privacy Policy
Firebase Storage	Panorama and horizon uploads	The images you capture in the panorama flow, and the stitched result	Google Privacy Policy
Sentry	Crash reporting — inactive in published builds	Nothing, unless you are running one of our internal development builds	Sentry Privacy Policy
Brevo	Waitlist and product email	Email address, first name	Brevo Privacy Policy
Cloudflare	Content delivery and DNS; object storage for Community Missions uploads (R2); the secure tunnel used for remote access to your rig	Standard web request data; contributed image frames; remote-access session traffic	Cloudflare Privacy Policy
Our stitching service (`stitch.arisastro.com`)	Assembling 360° panoramas and horizon profiles	The frames you capture in the panorama flow, your account identifier, and the observing-site coordinates and name for that job	Operated by us on our own infrastructure
CDS / Aladin HiPS (Université de Strasbourg)	Sky survey imagery in the planning and framing views	The sky coordinates being viewed, and your IP address as with any web request	CDS

Data Storage and Security

Account and profile data is stored in Firebase (Google Cloud infrastructure) with encryption at rest and in transit.
Error reports are stored in Sentry with their standard retention policies.
Equipment control data stays on your local network and is not transmitted to any external service.

We implement reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your data, but no method of electronic storage is 100% secure.

Data Retention

Account data is retained for as long as your account is active.
Equipment profiles are retained for as long as your account is active.
Error reports — none are collected from published builds. When crash reporting is active in one of our internal builds, reports are held by our error-tracking provider for its standard 90-day window and then deleted.
Panorama and stitch data — frames uploaded for stitching that are never processed are deleted automatically after 7 days. Finished panoramas and horizon profiles stay in your account until you delete them, or until you delete your account.
Anonymous account data (created when you use the app without signing in) is retained while it remains in use. We may remove anonymous accounts that have been inactive for more than 180 days and hold no data of their own; you can also clear it at any time by removing the app.
Billing records (invoices and payment history) are retained by Stripe as required for tax, accounting, and fraud-prevention purposes, including after account deletion.

Your Rights

You have the right to:

Access your data — view your account information and equipment profiles within the app.
Export your data — export your equipment profiles from the Settings screen.
Delete your data — delete your account and all associated data, either in the app (Settings → Account → Delete Account) or on the web at arisastro.com/account/delete. Deletion is immediate, permanent, and cannot be undone. See Account Deletion below for exactly what is removed.
Correct your data — update your account information at any time through the app.

For users in the European Economic Area (EEA), you additionally have the right to data portability, the right to restrict processing, and the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.

Account Deletion

You can delete your account at any time, by either route:

In the app — Settings → Account → Delete Account.
On the web — arisastro.com/account/delete.

Both perform the deletion immediately; neither files a request for someone to action later. After you confirm and re-authenticate, we permanently delete:

Your sign-in record (Firebase Authentication). If you signed in with Apple and delete from an iOS device, we also revoke your Sign in with Apple authorization with Apple.
Your synced data: equipment profiles, app settings, horizon panoramas, and panorama-stitch uploads and results.
Your subscription billing profile — any active subscription is cancelled immediately and your Stripe customer record is deleted. Stripe retains past invoices as described under Data Retention.
Your remote-access rig registrations and their access tunnels.
Your beta-access flag, any waitlist entries matching your account email, and your contact record on our mailing list.
Any outstanding rig-claim codes issued to your account, and the daily upload counters for rigs you owned.
Your sky-survey (Community Missions) uploads awaiting review, along with your mission memberships and leaderboard entries. Contribution statistics already accepted into the shared dataset are anonymized — the data point remains, with no link to you.

Community forum: deleting your ARIS account permanently disables forum sign-in. Forum posts remain under your forum username unless you ask us to anonymize or remove them — email support@arisastro.com and we will do so promptly.

We keep a minimal deletion record (timestamps and counters, no personal information) as an audit trail, and billing events already recorded in our payment log remain associated only with a pseudonymous identifier. If you took part in our affiliate program, the commission and payout records associated with it are kept as financial records, on the same basis as invoices.

For users subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):

Legal basis for processing: We process your data based on contractual necessity (to provide the Service), legitimate interest (error reporting to maintain service quality), and consent (where applicable).
Data transfers: Your data may be transferred to and processed in the United States through our use of Firebase and Sentry. These transfers are governed by Standard Contractual Clauses.
Data Protection Officer: For GDPR-related inquiries, contact support@arisastro.com.

Children’s Privacy

ARIS is not directed at children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we become aware that we have collected personal information from a child under 13, we will take steps to delete that information promptly.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by posting the updated policy in the app and updating the “Last updated” date above. Your continued use of the Service after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact Us

If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, contact us at:

Email: support@arisastro.com

Subject line: Privacy Inquiry