Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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New Stars Destroying NGC 1748
NGC 1748 cannot contain all the new stars it has formed. The young stars, the most massive of which are bright blue , emit so much energy they are pushing out and dispersing the…
Aurora Over Clouds
Aurorae usually occur high above the clouds. The auroral glow is created when fast-moving particles ejected from the Sun impact air molecules high in the Earth's atmosphere . An…
Americans Defeat Russians in First Space Quidditch Match
A historic first Space Quidditch match came to a spectacular conclusion last night as astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria caught the Golden Snitch to give the Americans a hard fought…
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…
Equinox + 1
Twice a year, at the Spring and Fall equinox , the Sun rises due east. In an emphatic demonstration of this celestial alignment , photographer Joe Orman recorded this inspiring…
Aurora Alaskan Style
Have you checked the space weather report lately? With a coronal mass ejection (CME) headed our way and an immense sunspot group tracking across the solar photosphere , skygazers…
Chandra Deep Field
Officially the Chandra Deep Field - South , this picture represents the deepest ever x-ray image of the Universe. One million seconds of accumulated exposure time with the…
Swiss Cheese-Like Landscape on Mars
Why do parts of the south pole of Mars look like swiss cheese ? This little-understood landscape features flat-topped mesas nearly 4 meters high and circular indentations over 100…
Comet Hale-Bopp in the Outer Solar System
Whatever became of Comet Hale-Bopp ? The brightest comet in recent years has continued into the outer Solar System and is now farther from the Sun than Saturn . To the surprise of…
The Crab Nebula from VLT
The Crab Nebula , filled with mysterious filaments, is the result of a star that was seen to explode in 1054 AD . This spectacular supernova explosion was recorded by Chinese and…
The UV SMC from UIT
Translated from the “acronese” the title reads - The U ltra V iolet S mall M agellanic C loud from the U ltraviolet I maging T elescope. FYI, the four ultraviolet images used in…
Mir Flares Farewell
Streaking low across the western horizon after sunset, the Russian Mir space station makes a final pass through the evening sky above the coastal city of Salvador, Brazil. In this…
Jupiter, Saturn and Messier 45
Brilliant Venus falls out of the evening sky as March ends, but Jupiter and Saturn remain well up above the western horizon. Jupiter blazes forth above and to the left of a…
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 2903
NGC 2903 is a spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way Galaxy . Similarities include its general size and a central bar . One striking difference, however, is the appearance of…
Discovery Spring
Welcome to the equinox ! Moving northward in Earth's sky, today the Sun crosses the celestial equator at 13:31 Universal Time bringing Spring to the north and Fall to the south.…
Pluto in True Color
Pluto is mostly brown. The above picture captures the true colors of Pluto as well as the highest surface resolution so far recovered . No spacecraft has yet visited this most…
The Nearest Stars
Which stars are closest to the Sun ? The closest is Proxima Centauri , one of three stars that orbit each other about 4 light-years away in the Alpha-Centauri system. Alpha…
Astro-2 In Orbit
Six years ago , a cluster of three ultraviolet telescopes flew into orbit on the Astro-2 mission aboard the space shuttle Endeavour . Seen here perched in Endeavour's payload bay…
Rockets and Robert Goddard
Robert H. Goddard , one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry, was born in Worcester Massachusetts in 1882. As a 16 year old, Goddard read H.G. Wells' science fiction classic…
Islands in the Photosphere
Awash in a sea of plasma and anchored in magnetic fields , sunspots are planet-sized, dark islands in the solar photosphere , the bright surface of the Sun. Before the…
Comet McNaught-Hartley
Outbound and climbing above the plane of our solar system, comet McNaught-Hartley (C/1999 T1) is presently soaring through northern skies. This telescopic picture , a composite of…
A Sun Pillar
Have you ever seen a sun pillar ? When the air is cold and the Sun is rising or setting , falling ice crystals can reflect sunlight and create an unusual column of light. Ice…
M82 After the Crash
When did the Cigar Galaxy light up? Evidence indicates how M82, the Cigar Galaxy , became so bright and peculiar: it collided with neighboring galaxy M81 . Astronomers become…
NGC 1818: A Young Globular Cluster
Globular clusters once ruled the Milky Way . Back in the old days , back when our Galaxy first formed, perhaps thousands of globular clusters roamed our Galaxy . Today, there are…
Viewing discoveries from 3 April 2001 through 11 March 2001.