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APOD

APOD

Upmediaby Nasa Gov

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) API returns NASA's daily astronomy image — HD photo, expert caption, historical archive (since 1995).

Visit site ↗Health checked 9h ago
Use it when

Completely free (NASA public data)

Watch for

Only one image per day (not a bulk image source)

First check

Get a free NASA API key at api.nasa.gov. GET https://api.nasa.gov/planetary/apod?api_key=... for today's. ?date=2024-01-01 for a specific date.

Auth
—
CORS
No
HTTPS
Yes
Signup
?
Latency
599 ms
Protocol
REST
Pricing
—

Uptime · 30-day window

Probes: 1Uptime: 100%Avg latency: 599ms
01

About this API

APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) is NASA's daily column since 1995 — one curated astronomy image per day with expert caption. Nebula photos, Mars surface, Hubble masterpieces, auroras, lunar/Venus conjunctions, and more. API lets developers programmatically fetch these: daily-refresh wallpaper apps, astronomy sections in education apps, social media bots posting science to Twitter/Weibo daily, AI chat assistants answering "what's today's APOD". Free to use; only requirement is a NASA API key (any email signs up). The most popular and easiest-to-use among NASA's dozens of public APIs.

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What you can build

  • 1Daily-refresh desktop wallpaper apps
  • 2Daily science widgets in apps
  • 3Social media bots posting daily
  • 4Astronomy knowledge source for chatbots
03

Strengths & limitations

Strengths

  • Completely free (NASA public data)
  • Historical archive from 1995 onwards
  • Captions written by professional astronomers

Limitations

  • Only one image per day (not a bulk image source)
  • NASA API key default rate limit: 1000/hour
04

Example request

Generic template — replace <endpoint> with the real path from the docs.
curl https://nasa.gov/<endpoint>
05

Getting started

Get a free NASA API key at api.nasa.gov. GET https://api.nasa.gov/planetary/apod?api_key=... for today's. ?date=2024-01-01 for a specific date.

06

FAQ

How do I register an API key?+

Submit your email at api.nasa.gov. You can also use the DEMO_KEY but rate limits are tight.

Image copyright?+

Most are public domain (NASA-photographed). Some images are from partner observatories — check per-image attribution.

07

Technical details

CORS: NoHTTPS: YesSignup: ?Open source: No
Auth type
unknown
Pricing
unknown
Protocols
REST
SDKs
python, javascript, go
Response time
599 ms
Last health check
5/12/2026, 7:37:53 AM
08

Tags

nasaastronomyimagesscience
09

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