Every license plan on TheStarDB comes in one of two editions.
Pick the one that matches your best use case and project design.
STEN Lite is a curated collection of the most iconic objects in the night sky, hand picked, richly detailed, and fast. STEN Full is the complete live astronomical database behind it, with open search across everything we've catalogued. Both run the same renderer and the same full experience. The only difference is how much of the universe you're searching through.
A curated collection of the most iconic objects in the universe: the stars, black holes, and phenomena people actually come looking for, each rendered in full and backed by real data. Nothing anonymous, nothing thin.
Everything in Lite, plus open search across the entire live astronomical catalog: millions of real cataloged objects, not a curated slice. Built for researchers, educators, and institutions who need the whole sky, not a highlight reel.
Most people start with Lite. Full is for when the curated collection isn't enough.
| You want to… | Lite | Full |
|---|---|---|
| Explore the most famous stars, black holes, and phenomena | ✓ | ✓ |
| Run a museum, planetarium, or classroom kiosk | ✓ | ✓ |
| Watch every cinematic sequence STEN renders | ✓ | ✓ |
| Search for a specific, obscure catalog entry by ID | ✕ | ✓ |
| Do research or coursework needing the complete dataset | ✕ | ✓ |
| Build a product or deployment around the full catalog | ✕ | ✓ |
Picking between STEN Lite and STEN Full comes down to one question: how much of the universe do you actually need to search through? Both editions run on the same rendering engine, display the same level of visual detail, and give you the same overall experience of exploring space in real time. The only real difference is the size of the catalog sitting behind your search bar, and that difference matters more for some projects than others.
STEN Lite is built around a simple idea: most people are not trying to browse half a million stars, let alone sixteen million of them. They want to see the objects they already recognize, along with the handful of pulsars and black holes everyone has heard of. Lite gives you every one of STEN's eighteen object categories rendered at full quality, a search bar scoped to a manageable, curated list, and a fast, reliable experience that holds up well on a kiosk, in a classroom, or on a personal project that does not need to query millions of rows. You are not getting a smaller version of STEN. You are getting the same STEN, aimed at a smaller, more relevant slice of the sky.
STEN Full removes the ceiling entirely. Instead of a curated list, your search opens onto the complete live catalog: millions of stars, quasars, variable stars, asteroids, binary systems, and confirmed pulsars, each one a real cataloged object with real measured data behind it. Full is built for anyone who needs to look up something specific rather than something famous: a researcher checking a single catalog entry, an educator building a lesson around an obscure binary system, or an institution that wants to offer visitors open access to the entire dataset instead of a fixed set of highlights.
For most projects, we recommend starting with Lite. It costs less, sets up faster, and covers the objects that the overwhelming majority of visitors, students, and casual users actually care about. Reach for Full when your workload genuinely calls for it: ongoing research, coursework built around the complete dataset, or a product that needs to search the full catalog rather than a curated one. If you are still not sure, start with Lite. Upgrading to Full later is simple, and your account, bookmarks, and Star Diary carry over automatically.
Sign up for a free account to start. Purchase Lite or Full to begin exploring the cosmos.