APOD - Astronomy Picture of the Day Downloader

Overview

This skill downloads the latest Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) from NASA's website and saves it to your Desktop along with metadata.

Instructions

When the user requests to download APOD or get today's astronomy picture:

1. Run the download script:

   python3 ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/apod/download_apod.py
   

2. The script will:

   • Fetch the latest APOD from https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
   • Download the high-resolution image
   • Save it to ~/Desktop/APOD/APOD_YYYY-MM-DD.{ext}
   • Create a metadata file ~/Desktop/APOD/APOD_YYYY-MM-DD.txt with title, description, and date

3. Report the result to the user, including:

   • Success/failure status
   • File paths where the image and metadata were saved
   • Any errors encountered

Requirements

The following Python packages must be installed:

pip install requests beautifulsoup4

Special Cases

• Videos: If APOD is a video (YouTube embed), the script will notify the user and skip the download
• Network errors: Clear error messages will be displayed if the website is unreachable
• Existing files: If today's APOD has already been downloaded, it will be overwritten

Examples

User request: "Download today's APOD" Action: Run the script and report that the image was saved to ~/Desktop/APOD/APOD_2025-12-19.png

User request: "Get the astronomy picture of the day" Action: Run the script and confirm the download with file locations

User request: "Fetch NASA's picture of the day" Action: Run the script and show the image title and save location