Use of the Burke-Gaffney Observatory Robotic Telescope service (the “service”) is subject to the following privacy policy.
The Information that we Collect
When you sign up to this service (become authorized), we may collect your:
- Full name
- Twitter handle, E-mail address, cell telephone number, Mastodon handle AND/OR your Facebook id number
- General location (city or town and country, etc.)
- Affiliation (club, institution, school, etc.), the course you are enrolled in, AND/OR your student number.
- Reason for using the service
- A password used to login to the Communicator App (while your password is encrypted after receipt, do not use a password that you use for any other purpose)
We do not require any privileged access to your Email, Twitter, Mastodon or Facebook accounts – you just use these services to communicate with the service’s automated programs.
We do not make available publicly:
- Your e-mail address, cell phone number, or Facebook id number
- Your student number
- Your Communicator App password
We do make available publicly:
- Your name, affiliation, general location, the course you are enrolled in (or the observer group that you are assigned to) and Twitter or Mastodon handle (if applicable) appears in the Queue and Observers web pages on the observatory's web site.
- Your name and Twitter or Mastodon handle (if applicable) may be included in the meta data and/or written as text on astronomical images taken by the service
- Your name and Twitter or Mastodon handle (if applicable) may appear in public messages sent by the observatory on its Twitter or Mastodon feed, on its mirrored Bluesky feed, Facebook page, and/or the public messages visible to Communicator App users.
We do not, except as indicated in this policy, share your information with any third party.
Your Communications with the Service
Your communication with the service, whether by:
- Twitter tweets or Twitter direct messages
- Mastodon public or private messages
- SMS text messages
- Facebook posts or messages
- App (running on Windows, Android, macOS, IOS, or within a web browser)
should be assumed to be not private. In the case of Twitter tweets, Facebook page posts, and Mastodon posts, it will by their nature, be publicly-visible. Twitter direct messages, Facebook messages, SMS text messages, App messages, and Email are intended to be private but we cannot guarantee that they will be.
Information Published on the Service’s website
The principal purpose of this service is to allow you to request that our telescope take astronomical images for you, however the details of these requests and the resulting images and data (associated with your name) are published publicly on our website and may be shared and re-published in other places without your prior permission.
Other
Your Email provider, Google (for users of the Android App), Twitter, and Facebook also may have privacy policies that you need to familiarize yourself with.
This service uses Twitter and Facebook “apps” to communicate with you – the observatory uses the apps, not you. You will never be asked to provide any additional authorization or information than is already available publicly by your Twitter or Facebook accounts.
This service uses the service provider TextMagic to send and receive SMS text messages and messages sent or received are subject to their Privacy Policy.
The Android, Windows, iOS, macOS, and web browser app was jointly developed by Saint Mary's University and Nova Astronomics.
As this service is operated as part of Saint Mary’s University, it is also subject to applicable privacy and access to information laws affecting public institutions.
(Updated 31 March 2025)