Look up a date on NASA’s website

  1. Open the official APOD archive.
  2. Locate your target year, month, and day.
  3. Open the entry and compare its displayed date with the date you chose.
  4. Read the explanation for observation dates, image context, and source credits.

For a birthday search, our birthday guide explains the difference between a full birth date and the Hubble month-and-day tool.

Choose a date in DailyApod

  1. Open an APOD entry in DailyApod.
  2. Tap the calendar control to open the date picker.
  3. Select the year, month, and day, then tap Done.
  4. Confirm the date on the loaded entry before saving it to favourites.

The date picker also has a Today action to return to the current APOD day. A keyword search is useful for a subject, but a calendar lookup is clearer when you already know the exact date.

Know the available date range

The APOD archive begins on June 16, 1995. Dates before that are outside the archive. Future publication dates are unavailable, and February 29 exists only in leap years.

If a date is selectable but no entry loads, do not assume there was no publication. A network failure, a delayed source, or a media-specific problem can also prevent display.

Why “today” can differ from your local date

DailyApod uses America/New_York for APOD publication dates. If you are in Asia or another time zone ahead of New York, your device can already show the next calendar day while the current APOD day is still the previous one.

Choose a historical full date to avoid that ambiguity. For today’s entry, compare the publication label rather than expecting a new picture exactly at your local midnight.

Recover from a missing result

  1. Check the selected year as well as the month and day.
  2. Check the connection and retry the entry.
  3. Look for the same date in NASA’s archive to compare the source.
  4. If the entry contains a video or animation, open the source to view that media.

When sharing a nearby date or a different year as an alternative, label the change clearly. To learn what an entry represents, read What is APOD?

DailyApod is an independent app by ajigu. It is not affiliated with NASA.