Astronomy Picture of the Day’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q1: What does APOD stand for? A1: APOD stands for the Astronomy Picture of the Day. We abbreviate this as APOD instead of ApotD because APOD sounds better (spoken: AYE-pod).

Q2: How can I easily see yesterday’s APOD? A2: Click the < less than sign < at the left of today’s APOD link line (near the bottom of […]. APOD Astronomy Picture of the Day’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Q1: What does APOD stand for?

Q3: How can I see an APOD that ran long ago? A3: All APODs are archived. To see any past APOD, access the archive page.

This is found by clicking "archive" on the link line, or even by clicking "Discover the Cosmos" near the top of recent APOD pages. Q4: Have some APOD pictures been run more than once? Many of our readers have been with us less than a year and are unaware of some really spectacular or important astronomy pictures.

New information about old pictures is becoming available over the WWW. The text and links for rerun pictures will make use of this newly available information.

So although the picture might be old, some of the text and links of each APOD will be new. Also, more web surfers have larger bandwidth connections, which allows us to post higher-resolution image files that can be transferred conveniently.

Software to handle more sophisticated image file formats has also become more common, so the picture's size and/or format might be new. Lastly, rerunning APODs saves us time and helps us update our archive.

In general, our rerun policy currently is to only rerun APODs more than one year old to keep the pictures relatively "new" to new APOD viewers. We will almost never rerun more than two pictures in any given week.

So when you load the current APOD,it is still, most probably, a new picture. Q5: I have a picture that would make a good APOD.

A5: We can't promise to use it but we do strongly encourage picture submissions to APOD. Even if you only know of a good picture, please tell us about it.

If you own the copyright for a submitted picture, please grant us explicit permission to use it. The best way to show us your picture is to load it onto a web page and send us the URL.

Please note that by submitting your image to APOD, you are consenting for your image to be used on APOD in all of its forms, including mirror sites, foreign language mirror sites, and direct APOD derivative products. Some of these, like Facebook, carry advertising.

We do recommend that you include a small copyright notice in a corner of your submitted images. Q6: Can I use an APOD picture for my computer-screen background?

A6: For personal, non-commercial, non-public fair use, yes.