Community Missions (Early Access)

Early access

Community Missions are rolling out now. The first mission — M31, the Andromeda Galaxy — received its first real community contributions in July 2026, and central mission stacking is in development. Details here will grow as the feature matures.

One backyard gets a few hours on a target before the season moves on. A community of backyards gets hundreds. A Community Mission pools integration time from ARIS rigs everywhere onto one shared target: everyone images the same object, the good subexposures flow into one place, and the goal is a single image deeper than any one rig could reasonably build alone. It is the community layer of ARIS — your rig still spends the night doing exactly what it always does; the mission is what all those nights add up to.

How contributing works

Missions are opt-in, per rig. Until you join a mission on a rig, that rig contributes nothing.

Once you have joined:

1. Image the mission target as part of your normal night. Your own sequence, your own filters, your own plans — there is nothing special to run.
2. The rig vets the night’s subs. After a night that touched the mission target, contribution is automatic: frames are quality-gated, and only the eligible subs are sent to the mission. Clouded, trailed, and otherwise rejected frames stay home.
3. Personal metadata is scrubbed before upload. Fields that identify you or your site — most importantly your observing location — are stripped from every frame before it leaves your network.
4. Every frame is credited. Each contributed sub is recorded against you in the mission ledger, frame by frame — credit is per contribution, not a vague thank-you.

What you get

• Credit on the mission. Your contributions are tallied, frame by frame, in the mission’s ledger.
• The deep community stack. The pooled subs are stacked centrally into a mission master — an image built from far more integration time than a single rig collects in a season — and the result goes back to the people who built it, including you.

Privacy

Community Missions follow the same local-first rules as the rest of ARIS:

• Nothing uploads unless you opt in. No joined mission, no upload — ever.
• Metadata is scrubbed on upload. Your name and your site’s location are not embedded in contributed frames.
• Your raw files stay yours. Contributing sends copies of eligible subs; the originals never leave your disk.

Status

Community Missions are in early access. The first mission (M31) is underway and received its first community contributions in July 2026. Central mission stacking — the pipeline that turns pooled subs into the deep master — is in active development, along with cross-rig coordination to help the community cover what a mission still needs.