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.
NGC 4631: The Whale Galaxy
NGC 4631 is a big beautiful spiral galaxy seen edge-on only 25 million light-years away towards the small northern constellation Canes Venatici . This galaxy's slightly distorted…
Centaurus Galaxy Cluster in X-Rays
The Centaurus Cluster is a swarm of hundreds of galaxies a mere 170 million light-years away. Like other immense galaxy clusters , the Centaurus Cluster is filled with gas at…
Looking Into an Io Volcano
What would it look like to peer into one of the volcanoes currently active on Jupiter 's moon Io ? The caldera of Tupan Patera, named after a Brazilian thunder god , reveals…
Comet Ikeya-Zhang Over Tenerife
Comet Ikeya-Zhang has become bright enough to stand out in the night sky. Discovered February 1 , the comet has now just rounded the Sun and has likely attained its peak…
An Unusual Globule in IC 1396
Is there a monster in IC 1396 ? Known to some as the Elephant's Trunk Nebula , parts of gas and dust clouds of this star formation region may appear to take on foreboding forms,…
The Cat's Eye Nebula
Three thousand light-years away, a dying star throws off shells of glowing gas. This image from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals the Cat's Eye Nebula to be one of the most…
The Water Vapor Channel
What alien planet's bizarre landscape lurks below these fiery-looking clouds? It's only planet Earth , of course ... as seen on the Water Vapor Channel. Hourly, images like this…
Odyssey Over Mars
Scroll right and journey for 300 kilometers over Terra Sirenum in the cratered highlands of southern Mars . The infrared view , 32 kilometers wide, was recently recorded by the…
S is for Sun
Taken yesterday from the SOHO spacecraft, this false-color image shows the active Sun near the March Equinox , the beginning of Autumn in the south and Spring in the northern…
Aurora Over Antarctica
Looking out from the bottom of the world , strange and spectacular sights are sometimes observed. Such was the case during the long Antarctic night of 1998 , as awesome aurora…
Breaking Distant Light
In the distant universe, time appears to run slow. Since time-dilated light appears shifted toward the red end of the spectrum (redshifted), astronomers are able to use…
Comet Ikeya-Zhang's Busy Tail
One of the brightest comets of the past five years will likely reach its peak brightness this week. Comet Ikeya-Zhang , officially known as C/2002 C1, can now be seen without aide…
NGC 2244: A Star Cluster in the Rosette Nebula
In the heart of the Rosette Nebula lies a bright open cluster of stars that lights up the nebula. The stars of NGC 2244 formed from the surrounding gas only four million years ago…
The Colorful Moon
Do you recognize the Earth's Moon when you see it? The crazy, patchwork appearance of the false-color image makes this almost full view of the Moon's familiar near side look very…
Neutron Mars
Looking for water on Mars, researchers using detectors on board the orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft have created this false-color global map of energetic neutrons from the…
SM3B: Mission to Hubble
Now complete, Servicing Mission 3B (SM3B) was really the fourth trip to the Hubble Space Telescope , as the originally planned mission 3 was split into two parts. Falling around…
LL Orionis: When Cosmic Winds Collide
This arcing, graceful structure is actually a bow shock about half a light-year across, created as the wind from young star LL Orionis collides with the Orion Nebula flow. Adrift…
Atete Corona on Venus
What could cause a huge cylindrical mountain to rise from the surface of Venus ? Such features that occur on Venus are known as coronas . Pictured above in the foreground is…
The 100-Meter Green Bank Radio Telescope
The largest single-dish fully steerable radio telescope began operation in 2000 August in Green Bank , West Virginia , USA . Dedicated as the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope,…
A Southern Sky View
On 1996 March 22, a Galaxy and a comet shared the southern sky. They were captured together, from horizon to horizon, in the night sky above Loomberah, New South Wales, Australia…
A Quasar Portrait Gallery
Quasars (QUASi-stellAR objects) lie near the edge of the observable Universe . Discovered in 1963, astronomers were astounded that such objects could be visible across billions of…
Columbia Dawn
Trailing a thick column of exhaust, the Space Shuttle Columbia blasted into the twilight morning sky on March 1, its thundering rockets briefly flooding a cloud bank with the…
Comet Ikeya-Zhang Brightens
In the last week , Comet Ikeya-Zhang has become bright enough to be just visible to the unaided eye. Based on its present activity, observers are optimistic that Ikeya-Zhang will…
Simulated Galaxy Cluster View
Stunningly detailed, this picture is a computer simulated view of a cluster of galaxies in the distant cosmos . A large, elliptical galaxy dominates this hypothetical cluster's…
Viewing discoveries from 29 March 2002 through 6 March 2002.