Privacy Policy
This statement informs you of the ARI Astronomical Technology Group's policies regarding the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information. This includes operation of the Liverpool Telescope (LT) and your involvement with ongoing developments such as the New Robotic Telescope (NRT) and other instrumentation or software projects. We will not use or share your information with anyone except as described in this Privacy Policy.
Liverpool John Moores University deals with all personal information in a responsible manner that respects personal privacy. The University is registered as a Data Controller with the office of the Information Commissioner as required under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018. The University will only process personal data in accordance with the GDPR. The University policy can be found online at https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/data-protection and the university Data Protection Officer may be contacted at the address given below. Contact details for the Liverpool Telescope operations group may be found at https://telescope.ljmu.ac.uk/Contact/.
While using our service, we require you to provide us with certain information that can be used to contact or identify you, including your name, contact address and professional affiliation. We use these details exclusively for providing and improving the Liverpool Telescope service, specifically to administer the peer reviewed time allocation process, notify you about the progress of your observing request, request your input regarding operational plans of the observatory and publish anonymised statistics about telescope usage. By using the service, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy. Provision of your contact details is necessary for the operation of your observing request and is mandatory. Since telescope data products are periodically updated, your contact details are stored indefinitely enabling us to notify you when future data become available for your use.
Mailing Lists
Independent of telescope operations and whether you have ever applied to use the LT, we maintain a contact distribution list of individuals who have specifically requested to be kept informed of development plans and other news from the ARI Astronomical Technology Group, including LT and NRT. Though we currently primarily rely on email, use of other electronic communication and collaboration media is becoming increasingly common and these may be included. This list is used exclusively for the purpose of informing you or requesting your input regarding scientific and operational matters of the ARI Astronomical Technology Group. It will never be sold or passed to any other organisation except as directly requested by you. You have the right to request that your details be removed at any time.
The Reasons We Collect Your Data
The GDPR provides a carefully defined set of lawful bases under which collection of personal information may be justified.
Your personal identifying details are being collected under the lawful basis of "Contract". This means we need the information in order to fulfil our contractual obligation to you because you have requested us to provide a specific service. In this case you have explicitly requested to use the Liverpool Telescope and in order for us to perform those observations and send you the resulting data it is necessary for us to be able to identify and contact you.
We may from time to time contact you to request your input on operational plans of the observatory. We therefore maintain a list of all past and present users of the telescope under the lawful basis of "Legitimate Interests". This means we store and use your name and contact details to perform this task which we judge i) you are likely to consider being in your own best interest, ii) you would reasonably expect us to do even if we had not explicitly stated so and iii) has a minimal privacy impact. In any case the GDPR ensures your right to request that your data be deleted from our list of telescope users.
For more information about the 'Lawful Basis' of data processing, please see the UK ICO website (https://ico.org.uk/) or contact the GDPR Supervisory Authority in your own country.
Data We Share With Other Organisations
Applications to use the telescope containing name, contact address and professional affiliation are shared with the funding agencies who provide the telescope access. Data will only be passed to those astrophysical research and funding organisations under whose auspices the application was made.
The LT science archive and web site publicly contain the name only (not contact address) of all past and current telescope users.
Log Data
We collect information that your browser sends whenever you visit our service. Log Data may include information such as your computer's Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser version, the pages of our service that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages and other statistics.
Cookies
The Liverpool Telescope website uses cookies. By using the service you consent to the use of cookies.
Security
The security of your Personal Information is important to us, but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. We only use third party systems to store and process your data for which we have completed a risk assessment exercise to ensure your data are secure.
Your Rights
You have the right to request access to or correction of any personal data relating to you. You may correct your own contact details in the LT operations database at any time through the Phase2UI tool (https://telescope.ljmu.ac.uk/PropInst/Phase2/). Please contact us at any time for further assistance or to change your details in our news mailing list.
You have the right to request erasure of your personal data and the right to object to or restrict our use of the data. Please contact us at any time about any of these issues. We will comply with any such request which may mean we will no longer be able to provide you with the observatory service except as an unregistered anonymous user, just as is available to anyone via the web site.
At your request we will pass the personal data provided by you (name and contact details) as plain, machine-readable text to another party nominated by you.
You can also contact the university Data Protection Officer for any further information and can complain to the Supervisory Authority (ICO at https://ico.org.uk/) about our data processing activities.
National Schools' Observatory
The guidelines laid out here relate to the activities of the ARI Astronomical Technology Group (i.e., LT https://telescope.ljmu.ac.uk/, NRT https://www.robotictelescope.org/) and to users applying directly to the Liverpool Telescope. We do not administer user accounts, collect or hold any personal or identifying data about users of the National Schools' Observatory. For more details please see the NSO privacy policy (https://www.schoolsobservatory.org/privacy-policy).
Changes To This Privacy Policy
We may update our privacy policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new privacy policy on this page.
Contact Details:
In the first instance please contact the LT Support Astronomer (https://telescope.ljmu.ac.uk/Contact/) if you wish to discuss or enforce any of your rights under GDPR or about any matter relating to the handling of personal data. If this is unsuccessful, or you feel unable to do this, please contact:
The Data Protection Officer
Liverpool John Moores University
Egerton Court, 2 Rodney Street
Liverpool, L1 2UA, UK
Tel: 0151 231 3550/3116
Email: foi@ljmu.ac.uk
https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/data-protection
Updated: 2019-03-20
