Nebulon

Data & Credits

Nebulon is built on public science data, open-source software and pictures shared by observatories and space agencies. These are the sources and the credits they ask for.

Pictures you save or share remain the property of their owners as credited.

Weather

Apple Weather
Cloud forecasts in the app come from Apple Weather through WeatherKit.
Weather data provided by Apple Weather.

Maps

Apple Maps
The Dark Sky Map is drawn on Apple Maps (MapKit), the city search uses Apple Maps, and directions to a dark site open in the Maps app. Apple's map data notices are under the Legal link on the map.

Pictures of the day and news

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
From NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (science.nasa.gov/apod), by its authors and editors Robert Nemiroff, Jerry Bonnell, Cecilia Chirenti and Keighley Rockcliffe. Many pictures belong to their photographers or institutions and are not in the public domain; the app shows each picture with the credit APOD gives for it, and pictures marked © are not saved or shared as files.
"NASA does not endorse Nebulon."
NASA news
From nasa.gov and science.nasa.gov. Shown in full. NASA material is generally not subject to copyright in the United States; images credited to others belong to them. No NASA logos are used.
"NASA does not endorse Nebulon."
ESA/Hubble, ESA/Webb, ESO and NOIRLab news
From esahubble.org, esawebb.org, eso.org and noirlab.edu. Shown in full under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence, with each article's and each picture's credit and a link to the original; the article text is adapted for the app (each story ends, for example, "Text and pictures: ESA/Hubble, CC BY 4.0, adapted"). None of them endorses Nebulon.
Other news
Headlines and short summaries from other publishers come through the Spaceflight News API and open on the publisher's site.
NASA Image and Video Library
From images.nasa.gov. The app's image search.
"NASA does not endorse Nebulon."

Stars

Yale Bright Star Catalogue, 5th edition
Hoffleit & Warren 1991, CDS V/50. The brightest stars, their brightness, colours, Bayer and Flamsteed names.
UCAC4
Zacharias et al. 2013, Astronomical Journal 145, 44; CDS I/322A; U.S. Naval Observatory. The fainter stars, bundled and streamed from our server as "deep-zoom stars".
Credit: "UCAC4 (U.S. Naval Observatory), APASS and 2MASS photometry".
APASS
"This research was made possible through the use of the AAVSO Photometric All-Sky Survey (APASS), funded by the Robert Martin Ayers Sciences Fund and NSF AST-1412587."
2MASS
"This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation."
SAO Star Catalog J2000 and Astrographic Catalog Reference Stars
SAO Star Catalog J2000 (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory 1966; J2000 edition by the U.S. Naval Observatory and NASA; CDS I/131A) and the Astrographic Catalog Reference Stars (U.S. Naval Observatory; CDS I/171). Positions and HD, SAO and Durchmusterung numbers.
IAU Working Group on Star Names
Proper star names from the IAU Catalog of Star Names, released under a Creative Commons Attribution licence.
IAU constellation boundaries
Delporte 1930, as tabulated by N. G. Roman 1987, CDS VI/42.
CDS, Strasbourg
The catalogues are distributed by the CDS, Strasbourg (cds.unistra.fr).
Object descriptions
Facts in object descriptions draw on SIMBAD (CDS), the SEDS Messier Database, NED/RC3 and Wikipedia (text under CC BY-SA 4.0).

Constellations

d3-celestial
© 2015 Olaf Frohn, BSD-3-Clause. Constellation lines and label positions.

Copyright (c) 2015, Olaf Frohn
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

3. Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

IAU and Sky & Telescope
Constellation figures follow the IAU and Sky & Telescope charts, CC BY 4.0.
Constellation art
By Johan Meuris for the Stellarium project, Free Art License 1.3.
"The figures behind the constellation lines were drawn by Johan Meuris for the Stellarium project and are used under the Free Art License 1.3. Nebulon tinted, resized and re-encoded them and shares these versions under the same licence; the originals are in Stellarium's repository."

Sky photographs

Nebulae, clusters and galaxies
Photographs from NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, ESO, ESA/Hubble and Rubin Observatory, and survey images from the Legacy Surveys (Legacy Surveys / D. Lang (Perimeter Institute)) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, all under CC BY 4.0. Nebulon cropped, resized, mirrored where needed and darkened the edges of these pictures. Every picture, with its credit line and a link to its source:

Planets and the Moon

Planet models
By Akshat on Sketchfab (https://sketchfab.com/shooter24994), CC BY 4.0.
Planet textures
From Solar System Scope, CC BY 4.0.
Moon map
The Moon map is from NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio (LRO data).

Light pollution

NASA Black Marble 2016
Suomi NPP VIIRS day/night band.
"Credit: NASA Earth Observatory / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Suomi NPP VIIRS day/night band (Black Marble 2016)."
Classified into Bortle levels with an approximate skyglow model; the land mask comes from the GLOBE 1 km dataset (NOAA) through the global-land-mask package.

Space weather, meteors and satellites

NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center
The Kp forecast for northern lights.
International Meteor Organization
Meteor Shower Calendar 2026: activity periods and peaks.
"Copyright International Meteor Organization; factual shower parameters reproduced with attribution."
CelesTrak
celestrak.org: satellite orbits.

Software licences

SwiftAA
MIT, © 2015–2017 Cédric Foellmi, built on AA+ by PJ Naughter. An implementation of Jean Meeus's Astronomical Algorithms: Sun, Moon and planet positions in the app. AA+ keeps its own licence.

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2015-2017 Cédric Foellmi (@onekiloparsec)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

SatelliteKit
MIT, © 2018–24 Gavin Eadie, derived from Orekit (Apache-2.0). Satellite passes.

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2018-24 Gavin Eadie

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

astronomy-engine
MIT, © 2019-2023 Don Cross. Sun and Moon on our server.
Hono
MIT. Our server's web framework.
tz-lookup
@photostructure/tz-lookup, CC0-1.0, with time-zone boundaries from timezone-boundary-builder (data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL).