Real sky. Real sources.

Catalogs and scientific data

• Deep-field stars: ESA’s Gaia mission, Gaia Data Release 3; data processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC). Gaia DR3 contains roughly 1.8 billion sources.
• Bright-star catalog: HYG Database 4.1, licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0 terms supplied with HYG. Constella’s selected, normalized and compacted HYG-derived catalog material remains licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0; the source project, creator notices and licence are identified here.
• Deep-sky catalog: OpenNGC, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Constella’s selected, normalized, cross-identified and compacted OpenNGC-derived catalog material remains licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0; the source project, contributor notices and licence are identified here.
• City search: GeoNames, licensed CC BY 4.0.
• Small bodies: NASA/JPL Small-Body Database and the Minor Planet Center.
• Satellite propagation: orbital elements from CelesTrak, used in accordance with its usage policy and propagated with satellite.js (MIT).
• Launch Radar: upcoming orbital-launch scheduling facts from The Space Devs / Launch Library 2, fetched through Constella’s shared 30-minute cache. Launch dates can change. Provider-hosted launch imagery is not imported because individual media rights vary.
• Constellation boundaries and figures: d3-celestial data, BSD-3-Clause.
• Local skyline and terrain: OpenStreetMap contributors/Overpass, OpenTopoData datasets and Open-Elevation, subject to their respective licenses and terms.
• Space weather: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center public forecasts.

Imagery and maps

• Milky Way: NASA/GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio Deep Star Maps 2020, public-domain NASA imagery.
• Deep-sky photography: screened imagery from ESA/Hubble, ESO and NSF NOIRLab under CC BY 4.0; Sloan Digital Sky Survey imagery under its CC BY policy; DESI Legacy Surveys imagery under CC BY 4.0; and Southern H-Alpha Sky Survey Atlas imagery with the requested acknowledgement. This photography is served as ordinary, independently downloadable public JPEG data rather than embedded in the signed mobile binary. The public integrity manifest identifies every exact file by path, byte length and SHA-256; object-specific credits, source pages, licence links, modifications and colour semantics remain attached to each record and are shown with its object story.
• Infrared imagery: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC WISE imagery under the NASA media usage guidelines, identified as infrared where used.
• Gaia mission context: original Constella artist’s concept generated with OpenAI image tools from an original prompt, reviewed for scientific context, and deliberately shown as mission context rather than an image of an individual Gaia source. No ESA logo or copied source image is used. © 2026 Quiet Eye Advisors LLC.
• Rosetta and Tiangong context: original Constella artist’s concepts generated with OpenAI image tools from original prompts, reviewed against mission configuration and clearly labelled as illustrations. They use no agency logo or copied source image. © 2026 Quiet Eye Advisors LLC.
• Planet and Moon maps: NASA/USGS public-domain products where retained. Saturn, Uranus and Neptune use original procedural rendering; no Hubble OPAL image is included in the mobile binary.

To fit the interactive sky and object cards, source images may be cropped, resized, tone-adjusted, colour-managed, registered to catalog coordinates or composited into texture atlases. Those presentation changes do not alter the underlying astronomical identity, and the source credit remains visible. NASA material is generally not subject to copyright in the United States, but NASA identifiers and third-party material shown within NASA products can have separate restrictions. No agency endorsement is implied.

Software

• Astronomical calculations: astronomy-engine (MIT).
• Satellite propagation: satellite.js (MIT).
• Constella application source: MIT License where published in the project repository.

Open licenses continue to govern their respective materials. “Constella,” its original interface, writing and branding are © Quiet Eye Advisors LLC unless otherwise indicated.