DATA PROVENANCE

Data sources & provenance

AeroScope operates no receivers and holds no private feed. Every data point traces back to a public source — all of them listed here so results can be independently checked.

Provenance

Where every data point comes from

AeroScope holds no private feed and operates no receivers of its own. Everything it shows is derived from public sources, listed here so any result can be traced back to its origin and independently checked.

SourceProvidesNature
adsb.fiLive ADS-B aircraft positions and velocityVolunteer receiver network, open data
adsb.lolLive ADS-B positions, including unfiltered trafficVolunteer receiver network, open data
airplanes.liveLive ADS-B positionsVolunteer receiver network, open data
OpenSky NetworkLive and historical ADS-B state vectorsResearch network (academic/community)
ADS-B Exchange lineage feedsUnfiltered aircraft trafficCommunity network
hexdb.ioICAO 24-bit hex → registration, type, operatorRegistry lookup
aviationweather.govMETAR / TAF aviation weatherGovernment open data (NOAA/NWS)
Satellite ADS-B mergeSupplementary coverage over oceans and remote regionsSpace-based ADS-B
Processing

How raw feeds become one picture

De-duplicationThe same airframe reported by several networks is merged on its ICAO 24-bit address, so one aircraft is one track — not three dots.
Position refreshPositions refresh on a fast loop of roughly 7 seconds; the client dead-reckons between fixes so motion is continuous rather than jumping.
Enrichment cadenceThe heavier enrichment-and-detection pipeline runs on its own cycle of about 12 seconds, so analysis never blocks the map.
Registry enrichmentType, operator and wake category are attached by hex lookup where the registry has a record; fields are left blank rather than guessed when it does not.
Conflict handlingWhere feeds disagree, the most recent well-formed message wins, and self-inconsistent messages are flagged by the integrity checks rather than silently averaged.
Attribution & licensing

Credit where it is due

AeroScope exists because thousands of volunteers run ADS-B receivers and publish the results openly. Each upstream network sets its own terms of use; we consume public endpoints at a modest polling rate and cache aggressively to limit load on them. If you operate one of these networks and want your attribution changed or your feed removed, contact us and we will act on it.

Our own derived work — the AeroScope ADS-B Anomaly Benchmark — is published under CC-BY 4.0 so it can be reused and cited freely.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Where does AeroScope get its flight data?
From public volunteer ADS-B networks — adsb.fi, adsb.lol, airplanes.live, OpenSky Network and ADS-B Exchange lineage feeds — plus a satellite-ADS-B merge for remote coverage, hexdb.io for registry lookups and aviationweather.gov for METAR/TAF. AeroScope operates no receivers of its own.
How often is the data refreshed?
Positions refresh on a fast loop of roughly seven seconds, with client-side dead-reckoning between fixes for continuous motion. The heavier enrichment and detection pipeline runs on its own cycle of about twelve seconds.
How are duplicate aircraft from different feeds handled?
Reports of the same airframe from multiple networks are merged on the ICAO 24-bit address, so one aircraft appears as one track rather than several dots.