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.
The Magnetic Carpet Of The Sun
The Sun has a magnetic carpet . Its visible surface appears to be carpeted with tens of thousands of magnetic north and south poles joined by looping field lines which extend…
The Milky Way's Gamma-Ray Halo
Our Milky Way galaxy appears to be surrounded by a halo of gamma rays . Gamma rays are the most energetic form of electromagnetic radiation , with more than a hundred thousand…
Blue Stragglers in Globular Clusters
This old dog is doing new tricks. On the left is ancient globular cluster 47 Tucanae which formed many billions of years ago. On the right is a closeup of its dense stellar center…
Irregular Moons Discovered Around Uranus
Where did these two irregular moons of Uranus originate? Last week two previously undiscovered moons of the distant gas planet were confirmed , the first in irregular orbits. All…
White Dwarf Stars Cool
Diminutive by stellar standards , white dwarf stars are also intensely hot ... but they are cooling. No longer do their interior nuclear fires burn , so they will continue to cool…
M31: The Andromeda Galaxy
Andromeda is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy . Our Galaxy is thought to look much like Andromeda . Together these two galaxies dominate the Local Group of…
Haunting Mars
This Halloween , the news about Mars is good news - Mars Global Surveyor will resume aerobraking into a mapping orbit around the haunting red planet. Wide angle cameras onboard…
3-D View Of Jupiter's Clouds
Every day is a cloudy day on Jupiter , the Solar System's reigning gas giant. This 3-dimensional visualization presents a simplified model view from between Jovian cloud decks…
Stereo Saturn
Get out your red/blue glasses and launch yourself into this stereo picture of Saturn ! The picture is actually composed from two images recorded weeks apart by the Voyager 2…
Rafting for Solar Neutrinos
Where have all the neutrinos gone? A long time passing since this question was first asked (decades) as increasingly larger and more diverse detectors sensitive to neutrinos from…
Closeup of Antennae Galaxy Collision
It's a clash of the titans. Two galaxies are squaring off in Corvus and here are the latest pictures. When two galaxies collide , however, the stars that compose them usually do…
Welcome to Planet Earth
Welcome to Planet Earth , the third planet from a star named the Sun . The Earth is shaped like a sphere and composed mostly of rock . Over 70 percent of the Earth's surface is…
Orion's Horsehead Nebula
The Horsehead Nebula is one of the most famous nebulae on the sky. It is visible as the black indentation to the red emission nebula seen just to the right of center of the above…
Moving Echoes Around SN 1987A
Yesterday's image highlighted reflective rings of light emitted by a supernova explosion. Today's pictures , taken over a year apart, highlight how these echoes are seen to move…
Echos of Supernova 1987A
Can you find Supernova 1987a ? It's not hard - it occurred in the center of the bulls-eye pattern. Although this stellar detonation was seen more than a decade ago, light from it…
The Antennae Galaxies
A ground-based telescopic view (left) of the collision between the galaxies NGC4038 and NGC4039 reveals long arcing insect-like “antennae” of luminous matter flung from the scene…
The Butterfly Planetary Nebula
As stars age, they throw off their outer layers. Sometimes a highly symmetric gaseous planetary nebula is created, as is the case in M2-9 , also called the Butterfly. Most…
Spiral Eddies On Planet Earth
Can you identify this stellar nebula ? How many light-years from Earth did you say? Looking like a twisting cloud of gas and dust between the stars this wispy nebulosity is…
The Heart Of NGC 4261
What evil lurks in the hearts of galaxies? This Hubble Space Telescope picture of the center of the nearby elliptical galaxy NGC 4261 tells one dramatic tale . The gas and dust in…
The Pleiades Star Cluster
It is the most famous star cluster on the sky. The Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city . Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45…
Mars: A Mist In Mariner Valley
An icy mist and late afternoon clouds cover much of this section of Valles Marineris on Mars . The Valles Marineris or Mariner Valley is a huge canyon system about 2,000 miles…
Cassini To Venus
NASA's Saturn Explorer Cassini with ESA's Titan Probe Huygens attached successfully rocketed into the skies early yesterday morning. The mighty Titan 4B Centaur rocket is seen…
Cold Wind From The Boomerang Nebula
A cold wind blows from the central star of the Boomerang Nebula. Seen here in a false color image of dust reflected starlight, the nebula lies about 5,000 light-years away. The…
Venus On The Horizon
The month of October features a sky full of planets, including Venus as the brilliant evening star. Besides the sun and moon, Venus is the brightest object visible in Earth's sky.…
Viewing discoveries from 6 November 1997 through 14 October 1997.