Privacy
What is stored, and who sees it
WhatTheStar has no server of its own — no database, no account, no session, no log with your name on it. Everything the site remembers is in your own browser, and this page lists all of it by key.
The short version
- No accounts. Nothing to sign up for.
- No advertising, and no advertising network is contacted.
- No analytics: no page-view counter, no session recorder, no error reporter.
- No cookies.
document.cookieappears nowhere in the source. - Your observing location, if you give one, stays in your browser.
- The pages are static files, so whoever serves them keeps the ordinary web-server request log.
Two requests leave this domain: the space station's orbital elements from celestrak.org, on pages that predict passes, carrying nothing but a catalogue number; and buymeacoffee.com, only if you follow the donation link on Support. Everything else the map loads is a static file from here.
What your browser stores
All of it is localStorage on this origin: readable only by this site,
never transmitted, and gone when you clear site data.
| Key | What it holds | Written when |
|---|---|---|
| whatthestar:progress Persistence.ts | Your streak, guide progress, stars you have identified, challenge results, your observing place (latitude, longitude, label, IANA time zone), the date you are planning for, and pinned reminders | When you finish a guide, answer a challenge, set a location, change the date or pin a reminder |
| whatthestar:bortle BortleScale.ts | Your sky-brightness setting, 1 to 9 | When you move the Bortle slider |
| whatthestar:layers LayersPanel.astro | Which map layers are on: figures, boundaries, the Milky Way, the grid, labels | When you toggle a layer |
| whatthestar:optics FramingPanel.astro | The telescope, eyepiece or camera you have described, for the field-of-view overlay | When you change the framing panel |
| whatthestar:guide-views GuidePreferences.ts | Per-guide view preferences, kept apart from progress so clearing one does not disturb the other | When you change how a guide is displayed |
| wts_night_mode Persistence.ts | “1” or “0” — whether the red night-vision theme is on | When you switch night mode |
| wts_map_intro_seen FirstRun.astro | “1” once the first-run tour has been dismissed | The first time you close the map introduction |
| wts_iss_tle ISSPasses.ts | The space station's orbital elements and the time they were fetched — public data about a spacecraft, nothing about you | On any page that predicts station passes |
| wts_iss_tle_failed_at ISSPasses.ts | When the last attempt to fetch those elements failed, so a network that cannot reach CelesTrak is not retried for half an hour | Only when that fetch fails |
Location
A star map is wrong everywhere except where you are standing, so the site offers to ask your browser for a position. That is always a deliberate click, and your browser will ask you again before it answers. The coordinates go into whatthestar:progress, rotate the sky, set your sunset time, and go nowhere else — nothing is reverse geocoded, and the label saved beside them is the literal string “My Location”. If you would rather not, pick a city on Tonight instead.
Reminders
A pinned reminder uses the browser's own notification API: it needs your permission and fires from the page while it is open. There is no push service and no subscription endpoint, so nothing is registered with Google, Apple or Mozilla. The reminder lives in whatthestar:progress with everything else.
Erase everything
This deletes every key in the table above, plus anything else on this origin whose name begins whatthestar: or wts_. Your streak, guides and saved place go with it, and there is no copy anywhere else.