Clear Sky Chart
Boring Admin Stuff

Yaaawwn....

Terms of Use

By using pages on this web site you agree to be a fine human being, to respect all sentient life and to not sue me.

After all, it's just a weather forecast. In particular I make no statements about the saftey of any site for which i provide a weather forecast. (Most of them i've never been to.) Not all clear sky chart locations are public or even physical observings sites. Check with the land owner, local astronomy clubs, or even local law enforcement for physical and safety concerns before attempting to visit sites listed cleardarksky.com.

Clear Sky Charts and all the data on clear dark sky are free to use for everyone though web browsers. But authors of mobile device apps must write me for permission before using my data. Sorry, the legal situation with my employer is complex, certain specific forms of collaboration with app writers is ruled out by the 100 page employment contract they made me sign (Yes, I read all of it.) (Yes, I have a day job. CSC sponsors are awesome people, but there are not enough of them.)

I get to change the terms of use, or any policy without emailing anyone first.

All clear sky charts belong to me, Attilla Danko, even if I use casual phrases like "your chart". They're mine. Mine I say! ...all MINE!..BWA HA HA HA......Ahem..

I reserve the right to delete charts that I believe have fallen into disuse. For the moment, that means charts whose legend pages haven't been downloaded in 30 days.

Linking and Hotlinking

Websites which do not charge admission may link any page at cleardarksky.com. (Websites which do charge admission can do what they like if they first buy me a 100 acre plot under a mag 7.4 sky.)

Websites which don't charge admission, and also don't make revnue from advertising, may display chart images, or preview images, provided each image links my legend page for that chart. Use the sample html that I have provided at the bottom of each chart's legend page. (Again, tedious rules like these may be discarded in exchange for sufficent largesse.)

Do not copy text, source-html or scripts from any page unless you get written permission from me. (Mostly because it just wont work off off my webhost.)

Copyright

All pages on cleardarksky.com plus all clear sky chart images and preview images, no matter what website they appear on, are Copyright © 2002,3,4,5,6,7 Attilla Danko.

Any transparency, cloud or seeing forecast map, labeled "CMC" is provided by the Canadian Meteorological Center and is © Crown copyright, product of Environment Canada. Seek their permission to display any of their maps, even if the maps are sourced from cleardarksky.com

All light pollution maps are from the The World Atlas of the Artificial Night Sky Brightness and are:

Credit: P. Cinzano, F. Falchi (University of Padova), C. D. Elvidge (NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, Boulder). Copyright Royal Astronomical Society. Reproduced from the Monthly Notices of the RAS by permission of Blackwell Science.
Conform to their reproduction guidelines before displaying their maps, even if sourced from cleardarksky.com.

Who's Rules?

This website is operated from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and is governed by the laws of that jurisdiction even for clear sky charts for other locations.

Privacy

Email addresses
cleardarksky.com does not sell email addresses and does not do mass mailings. (Frankly, even the thought is very offensive.)

If you email me, I will only email you with regard to this web site or possibly personal correspondance.

I do not email sponsors to bug them for ever increasing amounts of money (unless they ask in advance).

If you post an observation to the Astronomical Seeing Observation database, cleardarsky.com will not display your email address on any web page.

I may copy you on an email to a third person if that person is asking for changes to a chart that you requested.

Email Safety
I will never send you an email containing unicode characters, 100% html, javascript, active x, java or attachments of type *.scr or *.pif or incredible, urgent or secret offers. If you receive such, it's because someone is spoofing my email address and you should delete the email. If I ever do send someone an attachement (gifs most likely), they'll be in a zipfile.

Cookies
I dont use them. That does make for some rather long urls, however.

Chart Site Locations
Normally the legend page states the latitude and longitude of chart site in the fine print at the bottom of the page. Also, links to statellite predictions and others may reveal the site's latitude and longitude. The road map link also shows the chart site's location.

Chart requesters of observatories who do not want their site made quite so public, for security reasons, may ask me for location privacy. I will then do my best to make sure their latitude and longitude does not appear on cleardarksky.com. I also wont show distances to private charts as any less than 24km (15mi). I will turn off the road map, satellite prediction, and other nifty, but potentially location-revealing, links on the chart's legend page. I will also turn off the "on click" navigation features of the light pollution and forecast maps linked to the chart's legend page.

Access logs
Scripts keep track of how frequently charts are used so I can figure out when to buy more computers. The data comes from log files which also capture IP addresses and referrer pages which are not made public. But nobody keeps track of who is looking at what.

Advertising

I put google ads on some of my pages. But I prefer sponsorship. Sponors are wonderful people. But there just aren't enough of them. So I put google adds on clear sky chart pages -- but only clear sky chart pages that are not sponsored.

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