Terms of use

What the site is

An astronomical calculator and reference. It computes the expected visual rate of a meteor shower from published stream data, a lunar and solar ephemeris, and a third-party cloud forecast, and reduces the result to a verdict. It is provided free and without any account.

What the site is not

• It is not a travel service. MeteorShowerCal does not sell, arrange, book, reserve or take payment for travel, transport, accommodation, tours or events, and it does not hold itself out as able to do so. It operates no enquiry form for such services and acts as nobody's agent.
• It is not a safety service. Observing meteors usually means being outdoors at night, sometimes in cold weather or unfamiliar places, sometimes after driving. Decisions about whether that is safe are entirely yours. Nothing here is advice about road conditions, weather hazards, terrain, land access or personal safety.
• It is not a weather service. Cloud figures are relayed from third-party forecast providers and are their product, not ours.

Accuracy

The numbers are computed as described on the methodology page, which also lists the four things the model deliberately does not attempt: meteor storms, local terrain obstruction, forecast decay beyond a day or so, and the difference between a modelled ideal observer and a real one. Sky-brightness data is not connected yet, and where it would appear the site says so.

The site is provided as-is. No warranty is given that any figure is accurate, current or fit for a particular purpose, and the operator is not liable for any loss arising from relying on one. If you are planning something that matters — travel, equipment hire, a public event — treat these numbers as one input among several.

Using the data

Computed results served from the public API are licensed CC-BY-4.0. You may copy, redistribute and build on them, including commercially, provided you credit MeteorShowerCal and link back. See the licence text and the API documentation.

This does not relicense the upstream data. The IAU Meteor Data Center, Stellarium, GeoNames, MET Norway and NOAA sources keep their own licences and citation requirements, listed on the methodology page; if you redistribute their values you must satisfy those terms directly.

The site's own written text, layout and code are not covered by that licence and remain the operator's.

Fair use of the API

The API is open and unauthenticated because it is meant to be used. Keep requests to a sane volume, cache what you fetch rather than polling — the underlying answer changes on the scale of an hour, not a second — and send a User-Agent that identifies your application. Automated traffic that degrades the service for others may be rate-limited or blocked.

Alerts

Alert emails are a courtesy, not a contractual commitment: delivery depends on third-party mail infrastructure and is not guaranteed. You can unsubscribe from any email in one click, and doing so deletes your record. What is stored is described in the privacy notice.

Changes and contact

These terms may change; the version on this page is the one in force. Questions, licensing requests and corrections go to contact@meteorshowercal.com.