API response is missing credit/license for most images

[sschmaus]

As stated in the title, the APOD API response is missing the copyright field for many images that are copyrighted or are licensed under a creative commons license.

Example for todays APOD which is licensed under CC-BY 2.0 and should have the following credit line:

Image Credit: Hubble, NASA, ESA; Processing & License: Judy Schmidt

Unfortunately, the API returns no Credit/Attribution whatsoever:

https://api.nasa.gov/planetary/apod?api_key=DEMO_KEY&date=2024-11-17

Response:

{
  "date": "2024-11-17",
  "explanation": "What is the cause of this unusual parabolic structure?  This illuminated cavity, known as LDN 1471, was created by a newly forming star, seen as the bright source at the peak of the parabola.  This protostar is experiencing a stellar outflow which is then interacting with the surrounding material in the Perseus Molecular Cloud, causing it to brighten.  We see only one side of the cavity -- the other side is hidden by dark dust.  The parabolic shape is caused by the widening of the stellar-wind blown cavity over time. Two additional structures can also be seen either side of the protostar; these are known as Herbig-Haro objects, again caused by the interaction of the outflow with the surrounding material.  What causes the striations on the cavity walls, though, remains unknown.  The featured image was taken by NASA and ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope after an original detection by the Spitzer Space Telescope.   Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator",
  "hdurl": "https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2411/LDN1471_HubbleSchmidt_1024.jpg",
  "media_type": "image",
  "service_version": "v1",
  "title": "LDN 1471: A Windblown Star Cavity",
  "url": "https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2411/LDN1471_HubbleSchmidt_960.jpg"
}

This behavior of the API is problematic in many ways.

• Missing the attribution for a licensed image, e.g. under a CC-BY license violates the license terms.
• Even if the caption contains no direct mention of a license, the need for attribution is usually implied, especially if the image was not created by NASA directly.
• The API documentation states that images that don't return a copyright field fall under public domain which is currently not true for the large majority of images that don't return this field, again violating copyright or license terms

As a result, even official APOD bots that depend on this API are missing Attribution in their posts. Example on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/apod.shinyakato.dev/post/3lb4wsdb4cu27