About

What is this?

StarWalls is a free web app for browsing space photography as wallpapers. Photos come from three public sources published by NASA: the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD), Image of the Day, and the current Artemis II mission archive.

How it works technically

Built on Next.js 16 App Router with ISR for fast first loads and Framer Motion for animations. A service worker enables offline browsing of previously loaded photos. There is no backend database — all data comes directly from NASA's public APIs.

Images and rights

The photos in this app are published by NASA, but they are not all under the same rights, so the app treats them differently.

  • NASA-produced imagery is public domain. Image of the Day, the Artemis II archive, the NASA Image and Video Library, and APOD entries with no photographer credit are generally not copyrighted. These can be downloaded, cropped and shared from inside the app.
  • APOD photos credited to an astrophotographer are not public domain. Most recent APOD images are taken by individual photographers who keep their copyright. StarWalls shows those photos with their credit and links out to the original APOD page, but does not re-host or re-encode them and does not offer download, cropping or sharing for them. To license one, contact the photographer through their APOD page.

Details are in NASA's media usage guidelines and on the APOD about page.

Not affiliated with NASA

StarWalls is an independent personal project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by NASA or any other government agency. The NASA insignia, logo and seal are not used anywhere in this app, and the NASA name and marks belong to NASA.

Controls & Gestures

All the ways to interact with the app:

Gallery

  • Tap or click a photo to open it full-screen
  • Arrow keys navigate the grid (left / right / up / down) — also works with TV remotes
  • Enter or OK button on a remote opens the focused photo

Photo detail

  • Tap or click — toggle the info overlay (title, description, download button where the photo allows it)
  • Double-tap or double-click — toggle zoom-to-fill mode (fills the screen edge to edge)
  • Swipe up / down, or arrow keys Up / Down — next or previous photo, animated
  • Swipe right — close
  • Escape — close
  • Arrow keys Left / Right — previous / next photo with spring animation

TV Slideshow mode

  • Activate by appending ?tv to any gallery URL — e.g. /?tv or /artemis-ii?tv
  • Photos auto-advance in zoom-fill mode every 15 seconds by default
  • ?i=30 sets the interval in seconds — e.g. /?tv&i=30
  • ?photo=some-id starts from a specific photo — e.g. /?tv&photo=2024-01-15
  • Space, Enter, or OK button — pause and resume the slideshow
  • Arrow keys — skip to next or previous photo and restart the timer
  • Escape — close the slideshow back to the gallery

Contact

Questions, feedback, or a rights concern about a specific photo: starwalls@rzamann.com.

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