About Daily Pictures

Daily Pictures is a window into the cosmos — a simple, beautiful way to explore NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day archive. Every day since June 16, 1995, a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe has been featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

How It Works

This site fetches data from the NASA Open API, which provides APOD entries as structured JSON. Images are served directly from NASA's servers. Past entries are cached in your browser's local storage so they load instantly on repeat visits.

Features

Today's Picture — The latest APOD displayed as a full-viewport hero image with title, explanation, and copyright information. Click to view in HD.

Archive Browser — Navigate month by month through the entire APOD archive, from June 1995 to today. Each entry loads as a card with lazy-loaded thumbnails.

HD Viewer — Click any image to open a full-screen viewer that progressively loads from standard resolution to HD. Navigate between images with keyboard arrows or swipe on mobile.

Surprise Me — Discover a random APOD entry from the entire archive.

Credits

All astronomical data and images are provided by NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day service via the NASA Open APIs. Individual image copyrights belong to their respective authors as noted in each APOD entry.

APOD is authored and curated by Robert Nemiroff (MTU) and Jerry Bonnell (UMCP), with contributions from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Setup

To run your own instance, get a free API key at api.nasa.gov, then copy js/config.example.js to js/config.js and add your key. The DEMO_KEY works for testing but is limited to 30 requests per day.