AstroLens ✦

AstroLens is an elegant, minimal, and responsive web application designed to explore the cosmos. Built with a "dark editorial" design philosophy, it strips away heavy UI frameworks and cluttered interfaces to focus entirely on breathtaking astronomical imagery provided by official NASA APIs.

Features

• Random Discovery: Instantly fetch and display random space imagery from the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) API.
• Curated Galleries: Browse categorized collections of Constellations, Galaxies, Nebulae, and Planets using the NASA Images API.
• Anonymous Community (Planned): A discussion section where anyone can share thoughts about the cosmos — no accounts needed. Each post will get a randomly generated space-themed alias (e.g. Cosmic Voyager, Stellar Pulsar) and a unique colored avatar, with conversations filterable by topic.
• Editorial UI/UX: A highly refined, custom-built interface featuring high-contrast black/white layouts, delicate dotted borders, and beautiful serif typography (Playfair Display).
• Resilient Backend Architecture: The Express server implements an intelligent Database Fallback System. Every successfully fetched NASA image is quietly archived in a Supabase PostgreSQL database. If the NASA API times out or fails during high traffic, the app seamlessly falls back to querying the local database, ensuring 100% uptime.
• Server-Side Caching: Implements an in-memory TTL caching layer to dramatically reduce API response times and avoid rate-limiting issues.

Tech Stack

• Frontend: Vanilla HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript (DOM Manipulation, Fetch API).
• Backend: Node.js, Express.js.
• Database: Supabase (PostgreSQL).
• External APIs: NASA APOD API, NASA Image and Video Library API.

Installation & Setup

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/jiwatec/astrolens.git
   cd astrolens

2. Install dependencies:

   npm install

3. Set up Environment Variables: Create a .env file in the root directory and add the following keys:

   PORT=3000
   NASA_API_KEY=your_nasa_api_key_here
   SUPABASE_URL=your_supabase_project_url
   SUPABASE_KEY=your_supabase_anon_key

   (You can obtain a NASA API key from api.nasa.gov and Supabase credentials from your Supabase dashboard.)

4. Initialize the Database: Log into your Supabase Dashboard, navigate to the SQL Editor, and run the SQL script found in supabase_setup.sql to create the required apod_history and comments tables.

5. Start the server:

   npm start

6. View the app: Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000.

API Endpoints

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/api/apod	Fetch a random Astronomy Picture of the Day
GET	/api/gallery?category=nebulae	Search NASA Images by category
GET	/api/history	Past APODs from Supabase

Planned

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/api/comments?topic=all	Fetch anonymous community comments
POST	/api/comments	Post an anonymous comment ({ message, topic })

Design Philosophy

AstroLens was built as a strict departure from the heavy, complex CSS frameworks that dominate modern web development. It relies entirely on raw, vanilla CSS to achieve a premium "art gallery" or "newspaper" layout, proving that beautiful, robust applications can be built with minimal dependencies.

License

This project was built for educational purposes. All imagery belongs to NASA and their respective creators.