How to use it
Pick the year, month and day you were born, then press “Show my birthday sky”. If you don’t know the year, or would rather not say, pick “I don’t know the year”. You’ll see the most recent picture for that date first, with every other year laid out underneath.
The result shows the picture NASA featured that day, the photographer’s credit, a link to NASA’s page, the first sentence of the explanation, five colors picked from the photo, every other year’s picture for the same date, and a card you can share. Tap a different year in the strip and the large print above switches to it.
What is NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day?
APOD is a picture of the universe with a short explanation, posted on NASA’s website once a day since June 16, 1995. It is picked and written by astronomers Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell. Subjects range from nebulae and galaxies to eclipses, auroras, rocket launches and star trails over someone’s backyard.
A new picture goes up around midnight US Eastern time. If today is your birthday and the new picture isn’t in our copy yet, you’ll see the same date from last year first. As of October 9, 2026 the archive holds 11,430 pictures.
Which picture do you get?
If the archive has your exact birthday, that’s the picture. If it doesn’t, we look at every picture with the same month and day and pick the year closest to yours. When two years are equally close, the later one wins. In that case a dashed “Same day, nearest year” badge and one sentence explain why.
- Born before June 16, 1995: APOD hadn’t started yet, so you get the same date in the nearest year. March 5, 1990 shows March 5, 1996.
- Nine dates are missing from NASA’s archive (1995-06-17, 1995-06-18, 1995-06-19, 2000-06-30, 2004-12-29, 2007-07-13, 2018-04-01, 2020-06-10, 2020-11-30). For April 1, 2018, 2017 and 2019 are equally close, so you get 2019.
- February 29 only exists in leap years, so there are eight pictures, 1996 through 2024. Pick February 29 in a non-leap year and we’ll ask you to check the year.
- Dates after today can’t be picked. “Today” follows Korea time, the tool’s home time zone.
Photo credits and the share card
Most APOD pictures were taken by astrophotographers, observatories and research teams, not by NASA. NASA’s own APOD page says that neither NASA nor APOD can grant permission to use copyrighted images. So this tool never copies the pictures. It shows NASA’s original files straight from NASA’s servers and puts the credit and a link to NASA’s page right under every picture.
The share card includes the photo only when every name in the credit is a NASA organization or mission (for example NASA, JPL or the Apollo 15 Team). That’s about 5% of days (577 pictures). For every other day, the card shows five colors picked from the photo, the title and the credit instead. Colors aren’t the photograph, so no one’s work is copied. Days with no credit at all (36 pictures) also get the color card, to be safe.
If you want to reuse a picture elsewhere: NASA images are generally free to use with NASA credited as the source. For photos by individual photographers, ask the owner named in the credit.
Korean names and translation
NASA writes APOD in English. For Korean visitors the page adds the Korean name of the subject from our own glossary (Crab Nebula becomes 게성운). It’s a name guide, not a translation. In desktop Chrome a “translate on this device” button can translate the sentence without sending it anywhere.
Where the data comes from
The list comes from the new APOD endpoint NASA has used since September 10, 2026 (a WordPress API on science.nasa.gov). No API key is needed. We keep it on this site as twelve small monthly files, and your browser downloads only the month you picked, so your exact date never leaves the device.
Some older posts, mostly from 1995 to 2001, lost their picture link in the move to the new archive. We found those pictures again on NASA’s classic pages. For 28 days NASA has no picture left anywhere, so you get a link to NASA’s page instead. The list is refreshed every Monday, and the data date is shown at the top of the page.