Privacy & terms

Last updated: 17 October 2026

Who we are

AstroPics Community (community.astropicslab.com) is part of AstroPics Lab, a personal, non-commercial project. Contact: .

What we store

• Your account: email, username and your password — only as a salted, irreversible hash, never the password itself.
• Your public profile (optional): a short bio, your location and up to 3 links, shown to everyone above your photos.
• What you upload: your photos (a web-size version and a thumbnail, not the originals) and the details you choose to add (title, object, equipment, etc.).
• Activity: the likes you give, the comments you write and the photos you report. If one of your photos wins Photo of the week or of the month, we keep that award (and show a 🏆 next to your name for monthly wins).
• Security: to stop abuse we count failed sign-ins and registrations. These counters are stored as irreversible hashes and expire; we do not store IP addresses in our database.

Cookies

Only one cookie, aps_session, which keeps you signed in. It is strictly necessary, so no consent banner is needed. The registration page uses Cloudflare Turnstile to check you're human. No advertising, no tracking, no third-party analytics.

Why

To run the service you sign up for (your account, your photos, the public gallery) and to keep it secure. We never sell or share your data.

Where

On Cloudflare: database in Eastern Europe, photos in Western Europe. Cloudflare delivers the website through its global network (see Cloudflare's privacy policy).

Who can see your photos

New photos are private: only you can see them. When you make one public, anyone can see it with its details and your username. Comments are public on the photo they're written on, with your username; you can delete yours at any time, and the photo's owner can remove comments on their own photos.

How long

Until you delete it. Deleting a photo removes it immediately; deleting your account (in My account) removes your account, all your photos, likes, comments and awards immediately. Cached copies of public photos disappear within 24 hours.

Your rights

You can access, correct and delete your data yourself at any time, and object to or ask us about anything by writing to . You may also complain to your data protection authority (in Spain, the AEPD).

Rules of use

• Upload only photos you took or have the right to share. You keep the copyright; you let us store and show them in the gallery for as long as they are there.
• No illegal, offensive or unrelated content, and no spam. Admins may remove photos and suspend accounts that break these rules.
• You must be at least 14 years old.
• The service is free and offered as is, with storage limits per account. It may change or end; we'll say so on this page.

Credits

Object suggestions (names, types, constellations, sizes and magnitudes) come from OpenNGC by Mattia Verga, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our adapted copy, catalog.json, is shared under the same license.