Retrieve Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) images and metadata

Queries NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) API to retrieve images and metadata between a specified start and end date. Only image media types are included.

Usage

get_apod_metadata(
  start_date,
  end_date,
  api_key = "DEMO_KEY",
  folder_name = NULL
)

Arguments

start_date: Character. Start date for the query in "YYYY-MM-DD" format.
end_date: Character. End date for the query in "YYYY-MM-DD" format.
api_key: Character. NASA API key. Defaults to "DEMO_KEY", but a personal API key is recommended.
folder_name: Character or NULL. Folder name to save images on Desktop if provided. If NULL, images are only printed and not saved.

Value

A data frame containing metadata about the APOD images (date, title, explanation, URL, and media type).

Details

The function filters out any media types that are not images—for example, videos. It prints the image along with a truncated explanation for each entry, then returns the full metadata as a data frame.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Retrieve APOD images for a date range
apod_metadata <- get_apod_metadata(
  start_date = "2024-04-01",
  end_date = "2024-04-02",
  api_key = "DEMO_KEY"
)
} # }