The Astronomy Picture of the Day (AKA
APOD; Q752071 on
Wikidata) is a long-running Web 1.0 website
focused on posting daily images, sometimes from the NASA archives, other
times from amateurs, of photos (and sometimes videos) of space, the
universe, stars, and planets.
The website is hosted at https://apod.nasa.gov (plus mirrors) and has been running since 1995 on behalf of the United States government. The idea of a website like this is quite strange to think about. In a landscape of Web3 (Web4 if you still believe in crypto and NFTs), here is this website from over 30 years ago posting, still after all this time. If Astronomy Picture of the Day were made today, right now, it would be hosted on Instagram, Twitter, or some website that forces you to sign up or else you cannot view the «content».
It's amazing how a site like this, that has lived through a number of governments, still lives on and is so apolitical in what it posts.
During late 2025, the United States government shut down for some time; thanks to this, countless .gov websites were frozen in time and had no updates. As a result, the apod.nasa.gov website was also frozen, with a message saying how they «sincerely regret this inconvenience». Despite this, places like the Telegram mirror would still post photos, and after the shutdown ended, the website retroactively uploaded all the images.
APOD is more than just pictures; in fact, each submission is accompanied by a description of it, as written by very smart people like professors or astronomers. A lot of the time, these bios are actually quite confusing to read as they are in-depth, but still, even if you don't understand a word that you're reading, the images themselves can be breathtaking to look at.
In a strange way, looking at these photos, especially of outer galaxies, can make our little Earth seem so lonely and small, but still, the universe is endless in its wonders, much like how Earth is endless in hers.
It's quite cool as well to look at certain dates in time; if you were born in the later half of 1995, looking at what the APOD for when you were born can be quite amusing.
Below are some selected dates of events:
On a site note, both myself and my Gran enjoy viewing this site daily
:~)
This page was last edited on 2026-09-09 02:58:10.
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Let there be peace on Earth.