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.
A Near Record Ozone Hole in 2003
As expected, the ozone hole near Earth's South Pole is back again this year. This year's hole, being slightly larger than North America , is larger than last year but short of the…
Apollo 12 Visits Surveyor 3
Apollo 12 was the second mission to land humans on the Moon . The landing site was picked to be near the location of Surveyor 3, a robot spacecraft that had landed on the Moon…
X-Ray Moon
This x-ray image of the Moon was made by the orbiting ROSAT ( Röntgensatellit ) Observatory in 1990. In this digital picture, pixel brightness corresponds to x-ray intensity.…
Cold Comet Halley
While this may not be the most esthetic image of Comet Halley that you have ever seen, it is likely the most unique. The tiny cluster of pixels circled is the famous comet along…
Reflections on the 1970s
The 1970s are often overlooked. In particular, the beautiful grouping of reflection nebulae NGC 1977, NGC 1975, and NGC 1973 in Orion are often overlooked in favor of the…
An Unusual Event Over South Wales
Jon Burnett, a teenager from South Wales , UK , was photographing some friends skateboarding last week when the sky did something very strange. By diverting his camera, he was…
The Sagittarius Dwarf Tidal Stream
Is our Milky Way Galaxy out to lunch? Recent wide field images and analyses now indicate that our home galaxy is actually still in the process of devouring its closest satellite…
Aurora Over the Chugach Mountains
Auroras can make spectacular sights. Photographed above , flowing green auroras help the Moon illuminate the serene Portage Lake and the snowy Chugach Mountains near Anchorage,…
Our Galaxy in Stars, Gas, and Dust
The disk of our Milky Way Galaxy is home to hot nebulae, cold dust, and billions of stars. The red nebulae visible in the above contrast-enhanced picture are primarily emission…
Surveyor Slides
“Safe!” In September 1967 ( during regular season play ), the Surveyor 5 lander actually slid several feet while making a successful soft landing on the Moon's Mare…
IC1340 in the Eastern Veil
These ghostly filaments of interstellar gas are just a small part of the expansive Veil Nebula , seen against a rich field of background stars in the long-necked constellation…
Logarithmic Spirals Isabel and M51
Uncomfortably close hurricane Isabel (left) and 30 million light-year distant galaxy M51 actually don't have much in common. For starters, Isabel was hundreds of miles across,…
M33: Spiral Galaxy in Triangulum
The small constellation Triangulum in the northern sky harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum…
Egging On the Autumnal Equinox
Today is the autumnal equinox -- should eggs be able to stand on end? This long-standing myth loses much of its mystique after a demonstration that eggs can be made to stand on…
Opportunity Rockets Toward Mars
Next stop: Mars . Two months ago, the second of two missions to Mars was launched from Cape Canaveral , Florida , USA above a Boeing Delta II rocket . The Mars Exploration Rover…
Inside the Eagle Nebula
From afar, the whole thing looks like an Eagle . A closer look at the Eagle Nebula , however, shows the bright region is actually a window into the center of a larger dark shell…
Apollo 11: Catching Some Sun
Bright sunlight glints and long dark shadows dramatize this image of the lunar surface taken by Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first to walk on the Moon . Pictured is the…
Galileo's Europa
Launched in 1989 and looping through the jovian system since late 1995, the voyage of NASA's Galileo spacecraft will soon come to an end. The spacecraft has been targeted to…
Saturn by Three
These three views of Saturn were recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope on March 7th of this year, as the southern hemisphere of the solar system's most gorgeous planet reached…
The 2MASS Galaxy Sky
Are the nearest galaxies distributed randomly? A plot of over one million of the brightest “extended sources” detected by the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) shows that they are…
Hurricane Isabel Approaches
Where will Hurricane Isabel go? One of the stronger storm systems of modern times appears headed for one the more populated seaboards on planet Earth -- the east coast of the USA…
Globular Cluster M3
This huge ball of stars predates our Sun. Long before humankind evolved, before dinosaurs roamed , and even before our Earth existed, ancient globs of stars condensed and orbited…
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…
NGC 3132: The Eight Burst Nebula
It's the dim star, not the bright one, near the center of NGC 3132 that created this odd but beautiful planetary nebula . Nicknamed the Eight-Burst Nebula and the Southern Ring…
Viewing discoveries from 6 October 2003 through 13 September 2003.