arcsecond.io vs iDigBio

Arcsecond.io is the cloud API behind Arcsecond.local, a multi-user platform observatories run to manage telescopes, night logs, and data packages, but it still exposes the project's original public astronomy-lookup endpoints for object coordinates and exoplanets. Those endpoints are keyless and return live-synced records — /exoplanets/ pulls current rows from the NASA Exoplanet Archive. Paid tiers apply only to running a private observatory instance; the public data-lookup endpoints stay free.

iDigBio is a keyless REST API exposing more than 150 million digitized natural-history specimen records — pressed plants, pinned insects, fossils, and more — contributed by U.S. museums and herbaria under an NSF-funded national digitization effort. Search and summary endpoints return Darwin Core fields (collector, locality, taxonomic name) as JSON, and the same backend powers iDigBio's public specimen-browsing portal.