Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
Browse the NASA APOD archive without needing the exact date first. Filter by media type and keep moving deeper into older images and videos.
Sol 4: Mars Color Panorama
These mosaicked images form a color panorama of the region immediately surrounding the Sagan Memorial Station on Mars . The most recent images were recorded on Sol 4 - the 4th day…
Barnacle Bill And Sojourner
Deployed on a pop-up mast to its full height, the Sagan Memorial Station 's IMP camera now stands about 5 feet above the surface of Ares Vallis - on Mars . This is one of the…
Sojourner On Mars
The six wheeled robot rover Mars Sojourner rolled onto the martian surface on July 5th (Sol 2) at about 10:40 PM Pacific Daylight Time. This image confirms that its descent down…
A Martian Day's End
A Day or “Sol” on Mars is only 40 minutes longer than an Earth day - and Pathfinder's first day on Mars, Sol 1 according to its local calendar, was an eventful one . Still, late…
Pathfinder on Mars
Yesterday, July 4th, using its own array of fireworks, a parachute, and a cocoon of airbags, the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft successfully bounced and came to rest on the surface of…
A Landing On Mars
Today, July 4th , at about 10:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft will land on Mars . Ninety minutes before reaching the surface Pathfinder will…
Mars: A Journey's End
Mars Pathfinder is nearing the end of its 7 month journey. The robot spacecraft is scheduled to use parachutes, rockets, and airbags to “bouncedown” on the red planet tomorrow -…
Gamma-Ray Burst: A Milestone Explosion
Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) were discovered by accident. In fact, GRBs always seem to be where scientists least expect them. Thirty years ago today, satellites first recorded a GRB .…
Asteroid 253 Mathilde:'s Large Craters
You're zipping through the Solar System when you pass ... asteroid 253 Mathilde. This actually happened to NASA's NEAR spacecraft just last Friday. The above picture of the…
NEAR Mathilde
Hey Earth, look what I found! On the way to visiting the asteroid 433 Eros in February 1999, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft flew right by another asteroid:…
Ida and Dactyl: Asteroid and Moon
This asteroid has a moon ! The robot spacecraft Galileo currently exploring the Jovian system , encountered and photographed two asteroids during its long journey to Jupiter. The…
Barsoom
“Yes, I have been to Barsoom again ...” begins John Carter in Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1913 science fiction classic “The Gods of Mars” . In Burroughs' novels describing Carter's…
Mars: Just The Facts
Mars , the freeze-dried planet , orbits 137 million miles from the Sun or at about 1.5 times the Earth-Sun distance . It has two diminutive moons , towering extinct volcanos , an…
A Close Encounter of the Stellar Kind
The unassuming star centered in this sky view will one day be our next door stellar neighbor . The faint 9th magnitude red dwarf currently 63 light-years away in the constellation…
A GRB Host?
Where do gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) originate? The most powerful explosions in the universe have recently been located with record accuracy. But do GRBs occur in galaxies or out…
Antares
Antares is a huge star. In a class called red supergiant , Antares is about 700 times the size of our own Sun , 15 times more massive, and 10,000 times brighter. Antares is the…
Eruption on Io
There it goes again. Gas and rock were catapulted hundreds of kilometers into space as Jupiter 's most volatile moon, Io , showed yet another impressive volcanic display in this…
Distant Galaxies
This Hubble Space Telescope image of a group of faint galaxies “far, far away” is a snap shot of the Universe when it was young. The bluish, irregularly shaped galaxies revealed…
The Pipe Dark Nebula
The dark nebula predominant at the lower left of the above photograph is known as the Pipe Nebula . The dark clouds, suggestively shaped like smoke rising from a pipe, are caused…
NGC1850: Star Cluster in the LMC
NGC1850 is a large cluster of stars located a mere 166,000 light-years from Earth in our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The colors in this beautiful Hubble…
HH1/HH2: Star Jets
A cloud of interstellar gas and dust collapses and a star is born . At its core temperatures rise, a nuclear furnace ignites , and a rotating dusty disk forms surrounding the…
Asteroid 3753: Earth's Curious Companion
Earth is not alone. It orbits the Sun with a small companion: Asteroid 3753 . First discovered in 1986 and designated 1986 OT, this five kilometer rock was recently found to orbit…
Arp 220: Spirals in Collision
Arp 220 is the brightest object in the local universe . But why does it shine so brightly? Arp 220 was cataloged as a peculiar galaxy in the 1960s. In the late 1980s, it was…
APOD is Two Years Old Today
The first Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) appeared two years ago today. Pictured above is a scene surrounding the creation of an early APOD , depicting the famous astronomer…
Viewing discoveries from 9 July 1997 through 16 June 1997.