Privacy

Deep Field is a folder of static files. It has no accounts, no login, no comment system, no newsletter and no database. Nothing you do here is written down by this site.

What the site itself stores

One thing, in your browser, and only if you use it: your choice of the night or day theme, kept in localStorage under the key df-theme. It never leaves your device and is not readable by anyone else. Clearing your browser data removes it.

Server logs

Whoever hosts these files will keep standard web-server logs — IP address, timestamp, requested path, user agent — because that is how web servers work. Deep Field does not read them for anything other than diagnosing a broken page, and does not connect them to anything.

Images and links

Photographs are served from the publishers' own CDNs — NASA, ESA/Hubble, ESA/Webb, ESO, NOIRLab and others — so loading a page means your browser contacts those hosts. They can see your IP address and user agent, as they would if you visited them directly. Every headline links out to the publisher, and once you follow a link you are on their site under their policies.

The map

Zooming the map in past about a county fetches street tiles from tile.openstreetmap.org, which can see your IP address and which tiles you asked for — that is, roughly where on the map you are looking. Nothing is sent about who you are, because this site does not know. The whole-world view fetches none of them: it is drawn from this site's own files, so a reader who never zooms in never contacts that host at all.

Searching the map for a town sends what you typed to the same kind of lookup. Typing a coordinate does not: that is worked out in your browser. The map names whoever is drawing the streets in its bottom-left corner, and you can switch them off entirely — set the base map to None and nothing is requested from anyone.

Choosing the satellite view fetches imagery from server.arcgisonline.com instead, on the same terms. Every request either way identifies this site rather than hiding behind a blank user agent, which is what the tile server's own policy asks for.

The app

The Deep Field app draws the same map and fetches the same street tiles, from the same hosts, under the same rule: nothing until you zoom past about a county, and nothing at all if you set the base map to None. Places you save on the app's map are kept on your own device and are never sent anywhere — the export button writes a file you choose what to do with. The app has a subscription; this website does not.

Advertising

This site carries advertising through Google AdSense, in automatic placement — the network decides where the units go on a page rather than filling slots this site has marked out. Ad networks set their own cookies and identifiers to measure and target advertising, and that data is governed by the network's policy rather than this one. Where the law requires a consent prompt before those cookies are set, the network's own consent tooling handles it.

Advertising is not loaded at all on pages that are not asking to be read — the error page, the search box, the embedded scenes — or on the photograph pages and the digests. Those pages request nothing from the network, so nothing is set in your browser on them. Why that rule exists.

If you would rather not see personalised advertising, Google's controls are at myadcenter.google.com, and industry-wide opt-outs are at optout.aboutads.info and youronlinechoices.eu.

Analytics

None. There is no analytics script on this site.

Children

Deep Field is not directed at children under 13 and collects nothing from anyone, including them.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes, the revision date at the top of this page changes with it. Questions go to hello@cantinalabs.dev.