Terms of use · Star & Planet Finder

In short

The app is free to download. Pro is a subscription or a one-time purchase, bought through Apple.
A subscription renews by itself until you cancel it in the Settings of your iPhone, at least 24 hours before the period ends.
Pass times and positions are predictions. They are for going outside and looking up, not for navigation or for anything safety depends on.
Never look at the Sun through binoculars or a telescope.
The site is free for your own use. Do not copy its data in bulk or build on its servers.

This list is a summary. The terms below are what apply.

1. Who agrees to what

These terms are an agreement between you and Nir Alperovitch, the developer of Star & Planet Finder (“we”, “us”). They cover the Star & Planet Finder app for iPhone and iPad (“the app”) and the website at starplanetfinder.com (“the site”).

By downloading or using the app, or by using the site, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree to them, do not use the app or the site. If you are under 18, use them with the agreement of a parent or guardian.

2. The app’s licence

The app is licensed to you, not sold. The licence is Apple’s Licensed Application End User License Agreement, the standard agreement for apps on the App Store. In brief, it lets you use the app on Apple devices that you own or control, as the App Store’s rules allow, and it does not let you copy, resell, rent out or reverse engineer the app.

These terms add to that agreement. If the two ever disagree about the app, Apple’s standard agreement applies.

3. Free and Pro

The app is free to download, and finding the planets, the Sun and the Moon is always free. Pro unlocks the rest of the app. You can get Pro as a monthly subscription, as a yearly subscription, or as a one-time purchase. The app shows what Pro includes, and the price of each plan in your currency, before you buy.

A one-time purchase unlocks Pro for as long as we offer the app. It is not a promise that the app, or any one feature of it, will be there for ever.

Packs bought in earlier versions of the app keep unlocking what they unlocked then. Features added to the app since are part of Pro. To bring back anything you have bought, tap Restore Purchases on the plans screen, signed in with the Apple Account you bought with.

4. Subscriptions

Payment is charged to your Apple Account when you confirm the purchase.
A subscription renews by itself, for the same length of time, unless you cancel it at least 24 hours before the end of the current period.
Your Apple Account is charged for the renewal within the 24 hours before the current period ends, at the price you subscribed at, unless Apple has told you of a new price beforehand.
If a plan starts with a free trial, the trial turns into a paid subscription when it ends, unless you cancel at least 24 hours before that. Apple decides who is offered a trial, and it is offered once.
You manage and cancel a subscription with Apple, not with us: on your iPhone or iPad open Settings, tap your name, then Subscriptions. Deleting the app does not cancel a subscription.
When you cancel, Pro stays open until the end of the period you have paid for, and the subscription does not renew after it.

5. Refunds

Every purchase is made through Apple. We never see your payment details, and we cannot refund a purchase ourselves. To ask for a refund, go to reportaproblem.apple.com; Apple decides each request under its own terms and the law of your country.

6. The site

The site is free, and needs no account. You may use it for yourself, link to any page of it, and share what it shows you. Search engines are welcome to index its pages. Journalists and reviewers may use the material on the press page to write about the app.

Without our written permission you may not:

copy the site’s pages or data in bulk, by hand or with a program, or republish or sell them;
have another site, app or program ask the site’s servers for answers;
use the site in a way that slows it down or keeps others from using it, or try to get past what protects it;
try to get at the code or the data behind the site, beyond what a page shows you.

7. How far to rely on it

What the app and the site show is worked out from public data, and it is a prediction. A satellite can fire its engines, a new orbit can be published an hour after the last one, and a brightness is an estimate. The compass in a phone is disturbed by metal and magnets. A pass can come a little earlier, later or fainter than listed, or not be visible at all, and clouds are not ours to predict.

The app and the site are made for learning about the sky and enjoying it. Do not use them for navigation on land, at sea or in the air, for operating a spacecraft or an aircraft, or for anything on which the safety of people or property depends.

Alerts before a pass are sent as well as the app and your device can manage. One can arrive late, or not at all.

8. Staying safe

Never look at the Sun through binoculars, a telescope or a camera’s viewfinder, and never point one at it without a proper solar filter. The app showing you where the Sun is does not make looking at it safe.
Outside in the dark, mind where you are walking and what is around you, not only the screen.
Do not use the app while driving, riding or doing anything else that needs your eyes.

9. Your clips

Clips and pictures that you record with the app are yours. What you do with them, and where you share them, is up to you and is your responsibility.

10. What belongs to whom

The app and the site, with their design, text, pictures and code, belong to us or to those who license them to us. These terms give you the right to use them, and no other right in them.

Satellite orbits come from CelesTrak, close approaches of asteroids and comets from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Earth imagery from NASA Visible Earth, borders and place names from Natural Earth, star positions from the Hipparcos catalogue of the European Space Agency, and the picture of the Milky Way from NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/E. Slawik/M. Zamani, adapted and used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. That material belongs to its sources. Apple, iPhone, iPad and App Store are trademarks of Apple Inc.

11. Services that are not ours

Parts of the app and the site depend on others: the sources of the data, live video from the space station, the weather forecast, and the pages we link to. We do not control them. Any of them can change, be wrong for a while or stop, and what depends on it will then change or stop with it.

12. Changes to the app and the site

We keep working on the app and the site, so features are added, changed and sometimes removed, and what Pro includes can change with them. We may stop offering the app or the site. If we do, a subscription already paid for is not renewed.

13. No warranty, and the limits of our liability

The app and the site are provided as they are and as they are available. To the extent the law allows, we give no warranty that they will be accurate, free of errors or always available, or that they will suit a particular purpose.

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for lost data or lost profit, that comes from using the app or the site, from not being able to use them, or from relying on what they show. For the app, the limits in Apple’s standard agreement apply as well.

Nothing in these terms limits a liability that the law does not allow to be limited, or takes away a right that the law of your country gives you as a consumer and that cannot be given up.

14. Apple

These terms are between you and us, not Apple. Apple is not responsible for the app or for what is in it, has no duty to maintain or support it, and is not the one to bring a claim about it to. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of the app’s licence, and may enforce it.

15. Ending

You can stop using the app and the site at any time; remember that a subscription has to be cancelled with Apple, as described above. If you break these terms, your right to use the app and the site ends, and we may block access to the site.

16. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms, for example when the app gains a feature or the law changes. The new terms are published on this page with the day they changed, and apply from then. If you go on using the app or the site after that, you agree to them. If part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies.

17. Privacy

What the app and the site do with information about you is set out in the privacy policy.

18. Contact

Questions about these terms, the app or the site: write to support@starplanetfinder.com. Answers to the common ones are on the support page.