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.
Solstice And Season's Eclipse
Today the Sun reaches its southernmost point in planet Earth's sky at 13:37 UT . This celestial event is known as a solstice, marking the beginning of Summer in the Southern…
Sgr A*: Fast Stars Near the Galactic Center
Why are these stars moving so fast? Shown above is a time-lapse movie in infrared light detailing how stars in the central light-year of our Galaxy have moved over the past eight…
A Close-Up of Aurora on Jupiter
Jupiter has aurorae . Like Earth , the magnetic field of the gas giant funnels charged particles released from the Sun onto the poles. As these particles strike the atmosphere,…
Oceans Under Jupiter's Moon Ganymede?
The search for extraterrestrial life came back into our own Solar System last week with the announcement that there may be liquid oceans under the surface of Jupiter 's moon…
M2-9: Wings of a Butterfly Nebula
Are stars better appreciated for their art after they die? Actually, stars usually create their most artistic displays as they die. In the case of low-mass stars like our Sun and…
Degas Ray Crater on Mercury
Like the Earth's Moon, Mercury is scarred with craters testifying to an intense bombardment during the early history of the Solar System. In 1974, the Mariner 10 spacecraft…
IC443's Neutron Star
Using x-ray data from the orbiting Chandra Observatory along with radio data from the Very Large Array , a team of researchers has discovered evidence for a new example of one of…
International Space Station Trail
Still under construction, the International Space Station is becoming one of the brightest , fastest moving “stars” in the heavens. Despite illuminated clouds and bright light…
Manicouagan Impact Crater on Earth
The Manicouagan Crater in northern Canada is one of the oldest impact craters known. Formed during a surely tremendous impact about 200 million years ago, the present day terrain…
Jupiter Eyes Ganymede
Who keeps an eye on the largest moon in the Solar System ? This moon, visible on the lower right, is Ganymede , and the planet it orbits, Jupiter , seems to be keeping a watchful…
Composing the Omega Nebula
The Omega Nebula is a massive, complex cloud of dust and gas from which new stars are continually forming. The similarity to the Greek letter capital Omega gives the molecular…
Too Close to a Black Hole
What would you see if you went right up to a black hole ? Above are two computer generated images highlighting how strange things would look. On the left is a normal star field…
Apollo 17 Lunarscape: A Magnificent Desolation
Buzz Aldrin , Apollo 11 Lunar Module pilot and the second human to walk on the Moon , described the lunar landscape as “a magnificent desolation”. Dramatic pictures from the…
Abell 1795: A Galaxy Cluster's Cooling Flow
Throughout the Universe , galaxies tend to swarm in groups ranging from just a handful of members to casts of thousands. Astronomers have realized since the early 1970s that the…
Earth's San Andreas Fault
The Earth's surface is broken. Cracks in the Earth's crust known as faults can run for hundreds of kilometers. These faults are frequently the sites of major earthquakes as the…
Reflecting Merope
In the famous Pleiades star cluster , a star's light is slowly destroying a passing cloud of gas and dust . The star, Merope , lies just off the upper right edge of this recently…
Layered Mars: An Ancient Water World?
Pictured above, layers upon layers stretch across the floor of West Candor Chasma within the immense martian Valles Marineris . Covering an area 1.5 by 2.9 kilometers, the full…
The Circinus Galaxy
Powerful forces are at play in the nearby Circinus Galaxy. Hot gas, colored pink, is being ejected out of the spiral galaxy from the central region. Much of Circinus ' tumultuous…
Earth's North Magnetic Pole
A magnetic compass does not point toward the true North Pole of the Earth. Rather, it more closely points toward the North Magnetic Pole of the Earth. The North Magnetic Pole is…
SN 1006: Pieces of the Cosmic Ray Puzzle
Research balloon flights conducted in 1912 by Austrian physicist Victor Hess revealed that the Earth was constantly bombarded by high energy radiation from space - which came to…
A Frosty Crater On Mars
In the martian southern hemisphere, autumn has arrived. As on planet Earth, the cooler temperatures bring a seasonal frost to the landscape. Of course on Mars, the surface…
Palomar 13's Last Stand
Globular star cluster Palomar 13 has roamed the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy for the last 12 billion years. The apparently sparse cluster of stars just left of center in this…
Leonids from Orbit
Here is what a meteor shower looks like from orbit. During the peak of the 1997 Leonid Meteor Shower , the MSX satellite imaged from above 29 meteors over a 48 minute period…
BZ Cam Bow Shock
BZ Cam is a binary star system that is not well understood. In most cataclysmic variables , matter from a normal star accumulates on the surface of the companion white dwarf star,…
Viewing discoveries from 21 December 2000 through 28 November 2000.