I am worried that NASA "Astronomy Picture of the Day" has been axed

[SorellaLaBefana]

All morning I've been unable to load the site.

My usual "Is it Just Me" sites all confirm that it is "Down for Everyone"

Can find *nothing* in the 'news' on this. My only 'social' is DU

Wikipedia has the simple statement:

Demise of APOD

Following cost cuts at NASA, as of 7 September 2025, APOD is no longer available. The internet domain no longer exists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy_Picture_of_the_Day

APOD was accessible yesterday. Does anyone have any more information?

[sl8]

1. All the Water on Planet Earth - Astronomy Picture of the Day

There is something happening something where the DNS resolution is intermittently failing. It took me several tries to get the image to load in a new tab, and I see that it isn't (consistently?) loading the embedded link to the image in my post. I'll take the Wikipedia statement with a grain of salt, at least until they can provide a source.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2025 September 7



All the Water on Planet Earth

Illustration Credit: Jack Cook, Adam Nieman, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Data source: Igor Shiklomanov

Explanation: How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually. Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth's surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth's radius. The featured illustration shows what would happen if all of the water on or near the surface of the Earth were bunched up into a ball. The radius of this ball would be only about 700 kilometers, less than half the radius of the Earth's Moon, but slightly larger than Saturn's moon Rhea which, like many moons in our outer Solar System, is mostly water ice. The next smallest ball depicts all of Earth's liquid fresh water, while the tiniest ball shows the volume of all of Earth's fresh-water lakes and rivers. How any of this water came to be on the Earth and whether any significant amount is trapped far beneath Earth's surface remain topics of research.


Tomorrow's picture: butterfly webb

[SorellaLaBefana]

4. Well. Thank you

One of my most used 'is it down sites' (as well as others) still show (at UTC 12:54:32) it as down
https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/apod.nasa.gov.html

I am happy to hear that you were able to load it. Hopefully this might be an issue with my ISP somehow.

Will try again later.

[sl8]

7. De nada.

I was posting about Isitdownrightnow as you were (a tad slower).

It's still loading intermittently for me, something's not right.

[enough]

8. Stunning graphic.

[Incanus]

3. It's still active today, I follow APOD through social media.

You may be right since you can no longer preview tomorrow's photo. What a shame, amateur astrophotographers from around the world have had their work featured on APOD.

[SorellaLaBefana]

6. That would be enough to make me get some sort of social media account

Still 'No Joy' here in Texas. ?Abbot?

[Incanus]

9. The image quality is better on the website but there's always a link to it.

I was unable to access tomorrow's photo so APOD may be yet another casualty of the war on science.

[sl8]

10. I don't see a link associated with "Tomorrows Picture" yet.

The text for the link is there ( "butterfly webb" ), but no actual link. I think that's on the person that creates or maintains the page.

[Incanus]

11. Weird, it appears as a link when I view it.

This is the web address for tomorrow's APOD but when I click on it today's page keeps looping. That link has always worked before so it's an ominous sign that Wikipedia might be correct.

Tomorrow's picture: butterfly webb
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250908.html

[sl8]

12. That is weird.

I still don't see a link for tomorrow's picture, but when I loaded the link you provide, it shows today's "water on earth" page & image.

Curently I'm viewing the pages through a VPN, my non-VPN browser isn't resolving any of the NASA.gov addresses.

[Incanus]

14. It is, when I follow the link to the web page from social media it shows a link.

But when I access the page through my browser it's not a link. I reached out to admin of the page I follow but no one has responded.

What a terrible loss this would be, for the public, for the scientific community and for the small pool of dedicated photographers who've contributed hours and hours of their own time to provide the images.

[sl8]

16. Ah, that could be due to that particular social media site or poster. nt

[sl8]

5. The "Isitdowrightnow" site reports that apod.nasa.gov is down:

https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/apod.nasa.gov.html

[Incanus]

13. This is terribly upsetting, I hope we can still access the archives.

I know and follow many of the scientists and astrophotographers whose work is featured on APOD, many of them aren't professionals but they dedicate their time and images because of their love of the Cosmos - and it is a true labor of love.

This is from the About page of APOD:

Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is originated, written, coordinated, and edited since 1995 by Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell. The APOD archive contains the largest collection of annotated astronomical images on the internet.

..

In real life, Bob and Jerry are two professional astronomers who spend most of their time researching the universe. Bob is a professor at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan, USA, while Jerry is a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland USA. They are two married, mild and lazy guys who might appear relatively normal to an unsuspecting guest. Together, they have found new and unusual ways of annoying people such as staging astronomical debates. Most people are surprised to learn that they have developed the perfect random number generator.


About image permissions:
All the images on the APOD page are credited to the owner or institution where they originated. Some of the images are copyrighted and to use these pictures publicly or commercially one must write to the owners for permission. For the copyrighted images, the copyright owner is identified in the APOD credit line (please see the caption under the image), along with a hyperlink to the owner's location. NASA images are in the public domain, official guidelines for their use can be found here. For images credited to other owners/institutions, please contact them directly for copyright and permissions questions.

[sl8]

15. You might try changing DNS servers.

My primary DNS server address was 1.1.1.1, which is a Cloudflare server. Using that, I was only able to load the APOD page once out of about 30 tries.. I changed my primary DNS server to 185.228.168.9 (Cleanbrowsing server) and the NASA pages are loading fine now.

[Kid Berwyn]

17. Kakistocracy at work.

Pleiades: The Seven Sisters Star Cluster
Image Credit & Copyright: Francesco Pelizzo

APOD: Top source of public information.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap241209.html

[SorellaLaBefana]

18. Somehow must be my ISP. Finally tried my cellphone which worked fine (5G)

Well. Yes. Am old.

Do think of phone as something to, well, make PHONE calls with. Texting more these days. Oh, and pictures, use it for pictures now and no longer carry a small digital point&shoot everywhere

Yes. The unsourced Wiki notice is what made me really worry as NASA is under stress from our current Administration

Thank y'all for your replies

[Rebl2]

19. I saw it today

All the water on the planet was the title of the picture and it said September 7, 2025.

[Cerulean Southpaw]

20. Change DNS

I checked after seeing this, and I couldn't reach nasa.gov at all. I was using google's DNS (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4).

nslookup could find it if I used comcast/xfinity dns (75.75.75.75).

I changed my router's settings to use Quad9 "Privacy-respecting" DNS (collects no information, respects Swiss privacy law), and I could reach it again.

9.9.9.11
149.112.112.11