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NASA Open APIs API Documentation

APOD

Number of APIs: 1


APOD

One of the most popular websites at NASA is the Astronomy Picture of the Day.

In fact, this website is one of the most popular websites across all federal agencies. It has the popular appeal of a Justin Bieber video. This endpoint structures the APOD imagery and associated metadata so that it can be repurposed for other applications. In addition, if the concept_tags parameter is set to True, then keywords derived from the image explanation are returned. These keywords could be used as auto-generated hashtags for twitter or instagram feeds; but generally help with discoverability of relevant imagery. The full documentation for this API can be found in the APOD API Github repository.

HTTP Request

GET https://api.nasa.gov/planetary/apod

concepttags are now disabled in this service. Also, an optional return parameter _copyright is returned if the image is not public domain.

Query Parameters

Parameter Type Default Description
date YYYY-MM-DD _today_ The date of the APOD image to retrieve
start_date YYYY-MM-DD none The start of a date range, when requesting date for a range of dates. Cannot be used with `date`.
end_date YYYY-MM-DD _today_ The end of the date range, when used with `start_date`.
count int none If this is specified then `count` randomly chosen images will be returned. Cannot be used with `date` or `start_date` and `end_date`.
thumbs bool False Return the URL of video thumbnail. If an APOD is not a video, this parameter is ignored.
api_key string DEMO_KEY api.nasa.gov key for expanded usage

Example query https://api.nasa.gov/planetary/apod?api_key=DEMO_KEY


1. Astronomy picture of the day

GET https://api.nasa.gov/planetary/apod?date=&start_date=&end_date=&count=&thumbs



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