APOD-Mood-Gallery: A visually rich, AI-powered interactive astronomy gallery

Source: Dev.to

Overview

The APOD Mood Gallery is a Progressive Web App (PWA) built for space enthusiasts, astronomy lovers, and astrophotography fans who follow NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD). It lets users explore the cosmos not only scientifically but also through visual aesthetics, emotional moods, and personalized collections—all powered by client‑side AI and 3D rendering.

Features

• AI Image Analysis – Private, in‑browser analysis with TensorFlow.js (MobileNet) that identifies visual characteristics and classifies images by “mood”.
• Dynamic Color Palettes – Automatic extraction of harmonious color palettes from each astronomical image, performed in Web Workers to keep the UI snappy.
• 3D Solar System & Exoplanets – Interactive exploration of real‑time planetary positions using astronomy-engine and react‑three‑fiber.
• Personalized “For You” Feed – A local recommendation engine that learns your preferred space images over time.
• Mood Board Creator – Curate favorite images into a visual mood board that can be exported locally as PDF or ZIP.
• PWA Support – Installable with offline capabilities and background APOD synchronization.

Technical Details

• Frontend Framework: React 19 + Vite for fast, modern development.
• Styling: Tailwind CSS, PostCSS, and Autoprefixer.
• Machine Learning: @tensorflow/tfjs with the MobileNet model (@tensorflow-models/mobilenet) for in‑browser image classification.
• 3D Rendering: three, @react-three/fiber, @react-three/drei, and astronomy-engine for accurate celestial math.
• State & Performance: Custom local‑storage services and Web Workers for parallel processing of image pixels, preventing main‑thread blocking.

Demo

Live Demo – APOD Mood Gallery

Repository

View on GitHub