Terms and Conditions

HELION is operated by Andreas Möller, a sole proprietor in Germany, at Ernst-Reinke-Str. 3, 10369 Berlin, Germany. Anything concerning these terms goes to info@helion1.com. Your contract for the service is with that operator, and these terms are part of it.

HELION takes the frames of one session, meaning one camera, one lens and one bracket together with the calibration frames that belong to it, and runs them through the ten steps of the pipeline. What comes back is a finished picture of the corona and, depending on your plan, the files the run produced along the way. The service is automatic. No person edits your pictures by hand, and it is not a retouching service.

You need an account to upload frames and to start a run. Give an email address you can actually read, because the verification, the notices about your runs and any change to these terms all go there. Keep your password to yourself: what is done through your account counts as done by you. One account belongs to one person, and its access may not be passed on. You can close the account at any time from the user center.

The plans, their prices and what each one includes are listed on the pricing page, and that listing is part of these terms. Prices are per project, in US dollars, and they include value added tax wherever it applies to you. The free plan runs the same pipeline with the same defaults as the paid plans, at preview size, under our mark and with fewer files to keep. Each plan states how many runs a project is allowed, and running the project again inside that number, after moving one of the rendering sliders, is included.

Payment is handled by our payment provider, and its own terms apply to the payment itself. A project becomes payable when you choose a paid plan for it, and a run that never finishes does not count against the runs the plan allows. If a payment fails or is reversed, we may stop the runs on that project and hold the results back until the payment is settled.

A paid run begins as soon as you confirm it. By confirming, you expressly ask us to begin before the fourteen-day withdrawal period has run out, and you acknowledge that your right of withdrawal ends once the first run has finished and the results are available to you. Until a run finishes you can cancel it, and nothing is charged. The free plan costs nothing, so no right of withdrawal arises for it.

If a run finishes but the results are missing or unusable for a reason on our side, tell us within fourteen days and we refund that project in full or run it again, whichever you prefer. A result you simply do not like is not a defect: what the pipeline can make depends on the frames you shot, on the sky you shot them through and on the calibration you supplied. Your statutory rights in case of defects stay untouched.

Everything you upload, and every picture the pipeline makes from it, belongs to you. You grant us only the narrow permission the service needs: to store your frames, to run them through the pipeline, to keep the results available to you for the period your plan covers, and to hold backups of both. Nothing beyond that. We do not publish your pictures, we do not pass them on except to the hosting and payment providers that run the infrastructure for us, and we do not use them in our own gallery or in advertising unless you have given us separate written permission for the picture in question.

Upload only frames you shot yourself or otherwise hold the rights to, and upload nothing but astronomical image data with the calibration frames that go with it. Nothing unlawful, and nothing that infringes another person's rights. If an account is used against this rule we may stop its runs, delete the material and close it, and you carry the cost of any claim a third party brings against us over what you uploaded.

A project is deleted once the period your plan states has run out, counted from the day you create it: seven days on the free plan, 180 days on Standard and on Pro. Deleting the project deletes the frames you uploaded to it and the results of every run on it. Download what you want to keep before that period ends, because afterwards the files cannot be recovered. Closing your account deletes your projects, your frames and your results with it.

We work to keep the service reachable, but we do not promise a particular uptime, a particular run time or a particular place in the queue. Maintenance, provider outages and reasonable changes to the pipeline come with a service like this one. We may improve the algorithms at any time, which means the same session run again later can come back looking a little different. We do not promise that a given set of frames yields a usable picture: that depends on the exposure, the focus, the tracking and the sky.

We are liable without limit for damage caused intentionally or by gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, and wherever the German Product Liability Act applies. For slight negligence we are liable only where the breached duty is one whose fulfillment makes proper performance of this contract possible in the first place and on whose fulfillment you may normally rely, and then only for the damage typically foreseeable when the contract was made. Further liability is excluded. Keep your own copy of every frame you upload: the service processes your originals, it is not a backup for them.

To run the service we process your account email, the technical data carried in your frames such as exposure, camera model and the time and place of the shot, and the record of your runs. We use it to deliver the service and to bill for it, and we do not sell it. Hosting and payment run on providers acting for us under contract. Write to info@helion1.com for a copy of what we hold about you, or to have it corrected or deleted.

We may change these terms when the law, the service or its prices change. You get the new version by email at least thirty days before it takes effect, and the email says what changes and points out what your silence means. If you do not object within those thirty days, the new version applies from that date. If you do object, either side may end the contract, and a project you have already paid for is finished under the terms it was started under.

German law applies, and the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not. If you are a consumer resident in another country, the mandatory consumer protections of that country stay with you. If you are a merchant or a legal entity under public law, the place of jurisdiction is our place of business. We are neither obliged nor willing to take part in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board.

These terms and the pricing page are the whole agreement between us, and side agreements need to be in writing. If one provision turns out to be invalid, the rest stays in force and the invalid one is read as whatever comes closest to its economic purpose. You may not transfer this contract to another person without our consent.