How to find the NASA picture on your birthday

Choose which birthday question you mean

There are two different searches: the APOD published on your full birth date, and a Hubble image associated with your birthday’s month and day. These tools can return different images, and neither should be presented as a photograph of your exact birth moment.

Find your birthday in the APOD archive

1. Open NASA’s APOD archive.
2. Find the year, month, and day you want. Include the year if you mean your actual birth date.
3. Open the entry and confirm the publication date.
4. Read the explanation and credit to learn what the image shows and where it came from.

If you use DailyApod, open the calendar control, choose the full date, and confirm it with Done. For ordinary archive browsing, see the date lookup guide.

What if you were born before APOD began?

The archive starts on June 16, 1995. It cannot provide an APOD published on an earlier birthday. You can choose the same month and day in a later year, but label it accurately: it is an anniversary entry, not your birth-date entry.

For February 29, choose a leap year if you want an exact month-and-day match. If you use a nearby date instead, keep that distinction when sharing it.

Try NASA’s Hubble birthday tool

What Did Hubble See on Your Birthday? asks for a month and day. It shows a Hubble observation associated with that date, which can be from a different year than your birth year.

Use the APOD archive for a publication date, and the Hubble tool for its selected Hubble observation. Compare the labels before deciding what to call your result.

Save the story with the picture

Keep the entry title, publication date, credit, and original link with your result. Some APOD entries contain video or other media rather than a still photo; that can be a valid result for your date.

If the page will not load, verify the date and try the official archive before choosing a replacement. Our date guide covers unavailable entries and date boundaries.