Glimpse into the Universe

The Challenge.

I wanted to create a site that allowed a user to see multiple images provided by NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day API on the same page. The user would be able to click on an image to get more information about the picture provided, with explanations written by professional astronomers.

My Approach.

After reading the documentation provided by NASA, I started by planning out how I wanted to display the provided data. Per the documentation, to pull multiple images from their api, I could either get a count of random images or pull from a specific date range. I wanted to allow users to view the most recent submissions, so I decided to write some code to find the necessary date range based on the current date whenever a visitor comes to the site.

Once I finalized the functionality of the data pull, I was able to work on how I wanted to display the data. I went with a simple tiled photo gallery that covered the full screen to allow the user to see multiple images at the same time.

While working on the overall design of the site, I noticed the explanations provided from NASA could vary in length. This lead me to revise my original plan of having a small description box to instead be a scrollable frame to allow users to be able to read the full description, regardless of length.

What Happened Next.

You can view the site live or you can view the source code.