Data Sources
Everything the Atlas uses, what it supplies, and how fresh it is.
| Source | What we use it for | Refresh |
|---|---|---|
| NASA planetary fact sheets & NASA mission pages | Physical data for Solar System objects; mission histories | Curated; reviewed on updates |
| NASA Exoplanet Archive (Caltech/IPAC) | The confirmed-exoplanet catalog (pscomppars composite table) | Weekly full re-sync |
| Wikimedia Commons (public-domain / CC files only) | Historic spacecraft photography NASA does not host — notably the Soviet Venera surface panoramas of Venus and Luna imagery. Each file’s own licence and author are recorded and displayed with the photo. | Curated |
| NASA Image and Video Library | Object photography (public domain; per-image credits shown) | Curated |
| ESA materials | Mission facts and selected imagery, used under ESA terms for informational and educational use — individual credit and license shown on each image | Curated |
| The Space Devs — Launch Library 2 | Upcoming launch schedule | Daily cache |
| NASA eclipse catalog (F. Espenak) | Eclipse dates, types and visibility paths | Curated almanac |
| JPL approximate planetary elements (E.M. Standish) | Computed planet visibility on Tonight’s Sky | Computed live |
| HYG stellar database v4.1 (CC BY-SA 4.0, © David Nash/Astronexus) | The star catalog: ~120,000 stars with distances, magnitudes, spectral types, luminosities | Static; re-ingested on upstream releases |
| D3-Celestial datasets (BSD-3, © Olaf Frohn; based on the HYG star database) | Constellation star maps (star positions, magnitudes, stick figures) | Bundled |
| IAU conventions | Constellation boundaries/names; object naming; planet definition | Curated |
| NASA · ESA · Spaceflight Now · SpaceNews · Space.com · Universe Today · Phys.org · ScienceDaily · Astronomy.com · EarthSky | News headlines & summaries — every item links to the original article; no bodies are copied | Every 3 hours |
| Anthropic Claude | In-house Sky notes, Ask-the-Atlas answers, interface translations — all clearly labeled | Daily / on demand |
NASA-produced material is used per NASA Media Usage Guidelines and is generally not subject to U.S. copyright; individual credits and third-party rights apply, and NASA does not endorse this site. ESA imagery is used under ESA terms with credits shown on the image. HYG-derived star data is CC BY-SA 4.0 (© David Nash/Astronexus). News content remains the property of its publishers.