Getting error 403 while requesting aavso.org from my photometry pipeline server

General Technical Support
1

I have an observatory pipeline that makes multiple requests to https://www.aavso.org/apps/vsp/api/chart/ every night to obtain comparison stars, approximately 50-100 per night. I think my IP address (165.227.236.75) has got banned, as I have recently started getting error 403 on all requests to www.aavso.org, while I can do the same request fine from another computer.

Is there any way to white-list my IP address? These are genuine chart requests for automated variable star observations.

Thank you!
Maxim Usatov
UMAB

2

Hi Maxim,

Over the last several years, AAVSO has made a substantial number of improvements to its technical infrastructure. This included moving our custom applications to a dedicated subdomain, deploying our apps on a scaleable computing architecture, requiring API keys, and introducing API rate limiting.

To fix your application, please:

  1. Update the URL to point to https://apps.aavso.org/vsp/api/chart instead.
  2. Add the required header and authorization token as described in our API documentation. You can find your API key in the user settings page
  3. Cache results whenever possible. Once created, our charts change quite infrequently, so I’d suggest caching the result for 2+ weeks.

If your automated system is part of a commercial product, please drop us an email so we can have further discussions.

To ensure you are kept up to speed on these topics, please subscribe to the Developer Mailing List by checking the “Developer Announcements” box on your user settings page.

Kind regards,
Brian

1 Like
3

Hi Brian.

Thank you for your reply. Updated the URL, using my API key, I am getting error 403 from my photometry server, but getting good result from another machine with a different IP address. Could it be that the IP address is still in the ban list somewhere on your end?
Maxim

4

Bump… Still getting this problem. “Updated the URL, using my API key, I am getting error 403 from my photometry server, but getting good result from another machine with a different IP address. Could it be that the IP address is still in the ban list somewhere on your end?”

5

Hi Maxim,

I looked through our logs and was not able to locate any references to your IP address. Are you getting the 403s immediately, or after several requests? If it is the latter, you are hitting our rate limit and need to slow down and/or cache results.

Brian

6

Getting 403 right off the bat:

root@ubuntu-s-1vcpu-1gb-lon1-01:~# wget [can’t post link - forum forbirds] chart
–2026-03-06 16:03:47-- [can’t post link - forum forbirds]
Resolving [can’t post link - forum forbirds] ([can’t post link - forum forbirds])… 54.197.238.68, 100.55.229.115, 98.89.112.80, …
Connecting to [can’t post link - forum forbirds] ([can’t post link - forum forbirds])|54.197.238.68|:443… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 403 Forbidden
2026-03-06 16:03:47 ERROR 403: Forbidden.

Same wget goes fine on another computer.

7

Maxim,

To double-check, are you sending along the relevant header and API key in your call to wget? It should be something like

wget --method GET \
  --header 'Authorization: YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN' \
  --output-document \
  - https://apps.aavso.org/...

Brian

8

Hi Maxim,

Thank you for trying again. Bert and I were able to locate your IP address in our logs and identify why access was being restricted.

We have adjusted our security filters and believe the issue should now be resolved. Please try again and let us know if you continue to experience any problems.

Kind regards,
Brian

1 Like
9

Thank you so much. Looks like all is working fine now!

10

I’m glad we could get it resolved!

Brian