Found a bug? Have a question about a NASA wavelength? Want to suggest a feature? Lumara is built and maintained by one person. Emails go straight to a real human.
I read every email.
Nothing. The Lumara app, on Android and iPhone, does not collect any personal data: nothing about you is sent to Lumara or to anyone else. There are no analytics SDKs, no advertising networks, no crash reporters that contact servers, no tracking pixels, and no accounts. This page describes Lumara 2.0. Lumara 1.1.1, the version before it, asked NASA's DONKI service (api.nasa.gov) directly and used fewer of the servers listed below; it collected nothing either.
The Lumara website is the one place with an exception, and it is worth stating plainly. To see which pages get read, each page load pings a counter we run ourselves on our own ChronoVerify service. It records the page path and the day, and nothing else: no cookies, no IP address, no browser details, and no identifier of any kind, so nothing links a view to a person. It is not an analytics product and no third party receives the data. The app does not do this; only the website does.
The website also loads its typefaces from Google Fonts, and its ISS video from YouTube. Both are set out under Third parties the website contacts below. Again, neither applies to the app.
Lumara never sends any of this anywhere and has no cloud sync of its own. On Android and iPhone it is kept in Lumara's own app storage, which other apps cannot read.
Your phone's own backup: Google backup on Android and iCloud backup on iPhone copy the data of your apps, and that can include Lumara's settings and your chosen city. This is your phone's backup, run by Google or Apple under your account, not by Lumara; it is what brings your settings back when you move to a new phone. You can turn it off in your phone's backup settings.
If you uninstall Lumara, its data on your phone is deleted with the app. A copy in your phone's backup is kept or deleted under Google's or Apple's backup rules.
Lumara connects to the internet only to fetch public pictures and data about the Sun, the Moon and space weather, over HTTPS, with no account and no sign-in. These are all the servers the app asks:
These are read-only requests for public files. Lumara adds nothing about you to them: no account, no ID, no city, no usage data. Like any web request, each one reaches the server from your phone's internet address, as it would if you opened the same address in a browser. NASA's, NOAA's and the other servers' own records of web traffic are governed by their own policies, such as NASA's privacy policy, not Lumara's.
Moon phases, moonrise and moonset, eclipses and the Moon calendar are computed on your phone and need no connection.
Some things happen only when you tap them: Rate Lumara opens the App Store (apps.apple.com) or Google Play (play.google.com), and the sources listed in Settings and the space weather notices open their own pages in your browser. Share Lumara hands a picture and a line of text with a store link to your phone's share menu; Lumara itself sends nothing. On iPhone, if you choose Save Image in the share menu, iOS asks once for permission to add the picture to your photos; Lumara cannot read your photos.
The website (lumara-space.app) is not entirely self-contained, and it is worth being exact about that:
There are no analytics SDKs, no advertising networks, no social widgets, and no third-party cookies anywhere on the site or in the app.
Lumara is suitable for all ages (Apple rating 4+). Because the app collects no data of any kind, and the website counter records no identifier that could belong to a person, it complies with COPPA, GDPR-K, and equivalent regulations by default.
If anything material changes, this page will be updated and the change date will appear in the footer below.
NASA's feeds sometimes stop updating or go down for maintenance, especially on the SDO and SOHO instruments. When one source is late, Lumara asks the next, and each picture says when it was taken or posted. If no source has a recent picture of a view, Lumara shows the newest one and says how old it is. Tap Refresh data on the SUN tab to check again.
Lumara's own 24 hour movie and NASA's 48 hour movies are 1024 pixels across; NASA's rolling 24 hour movie is 2048 pixels across. Lumara's own movie (5 to 10 MB) downloads once and then plays from your phone until a newer one is posted, about every 3 hours. On a slow connection the first download takes longer, and the tab shows its progress. If Lumara's movie cannot be loaded or played, the tab says so and plays NASA's rolling movie instead.
For the Moon, yes: the phase, rise and set times, the calendar, eclipses and the Moon widgets are all computed on your phone. Sun pictures and movies need a connection; Lumara's 24 hour movie, once downloaded, still plays offline while it is less than 6 hours old.
Not currently. The code is private. The data sources Lumara uses are all freely available. Anyone can build their own viewer.
NASA does not endorse Lumara. All NASA imagery used in Lumara is in the public domain per NASA's media usage guidelines.