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 Proton Aurora
What are auroras made out of? Triggered by solar activity, normal auroras are caused by collisions between fast-moving electrons and the oxygen and nitrogen in Earth's upper…
Retrograde Mars
Why would Mars appear to move backwards? Most of the time, the apparent motion of Mars in Earth's sky is in one direction, slow but steady in front of the far distant stars. About…
Open Star Clusters M35 and NGC 2158
Open clusters of stars can be near or far, young or old, and diffuse or compact. Open clusters may contain from 100 to 10,000 stars, all of which formed at nearly the same time.…
Close-up of the Face on Mars
Wouldn't it be fun if clouds were turtles ? Wouldn't it be fun if the laundry on the bedroom chair were a friendly monster ? Wouldn't it be fun if rock mesas on Mars were faces or…
A Flock of Stars
Only a few stars can be found within ten light-years of our lonely Sun, situated near an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. But if the Sun were found within one of our…
Full Moondark
The brilliant full Moon might not have looked quite like this to skygazers this week, but the image is a mosaic of 18 digital frames recorded on December 9th at 3:30 UT. At that…
Arp 81: 100 Million Years Later
From planet Earth, we view this strongly interacting pair of galaxies , cataloged as Arp 81, as they were only about 100 million years after their mutual closest approach. The…
Cassini Approaches Saturn
Cassini, a robot spacecraft launched in 1997 by NASA , is close enough now to resolve many rings and moons of its destination planet: Saturn . The spacecraft has now closed to…
NGC 604: Giant Stellar Nursery
Stars are sometimes born in the midst of chaos. About 3 million years ago in the nearby galaxy M33 , a large cloud of gas spawned dense internal knots which gravitationally…
An Antarctic Total Solar Eclipse
The Sun, the Moon, and two photographers all lined up last month in Antarctica during an unusual total eclipse of the Sun. Even given the extreme location, a group of enthusiastic…
NGC 2392 Nebula from Hubble
In 1787, astronomer William Herschel discovered NGC 2392 . From the ground, NGC 2392 resembles a person's head surrounded by a parka hood. In 2000, the Hubble Space Telescope…
Jaipur Observatory Sundial
Walk through these doors and up the stairs to begin your journey along a line from Jaipur, India toward the North Celestial Pole . Such cosmic alignments abound in marvelous…
Startling Star V838 Mon
Variable star V838 Monocerotis startled astronomers in January of 2002, undergoing a dramatic outburst like no other variable star known. Followed closely by ground-based…
New Horizons at Jupiter
Headed for the first close-up exploration of the Pluto-Charon system and the icy denizens of the Kuiper belt , NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is pictured here in an artist's…
Moonrise Through Mauna Kea's Shadow
How can the Moon rise through a mountain? It cannot -- what was photographed here is a moonrise through the shadow of a large volcano . The volcano is Mauna Kea , Hawai'i , USA ,…
NGC 869 & NGC 884: A Double Open Cluster
Most star clusters are singularly impressive. Open clusters NGC 869 and NGC 884, however, are doubly impressive. Also known as “h and chi Persei”, this unusual double cluster ,…
A Lenticular Cloud Over Hawai'i
Can a cloud do that? Actually, pictured above are several clouds all stacked up into one striking lenticular cloud . Normally, air moves much more horizontally than it does…
A Venus Landing
This image is part of the first color panoramic view from Venus . A TV camera on the Soviet Venera 13 lander that parachuted to the surface on 1982 March 1 transmitted it. Venus'…
Phobos Over Mars
Hurtling through space a mere 3,000 miles above the Martian surface , the diminutive moon Phobos (below and left of center) was imaged against the backdrop of a large shield…
The Most Distant X-Ray Jet
A false-color x-ray image inset at upper left reveals emission from a cosmic jet of high-energy particles, 100,000 light-years in length, emerging from quasar GB1508+5714 . An…
The Long Shadow of the Moon
The long shadow of the Moon fell across the continent of Antarctica on November 23rd , during the second solar eclipse of 2003. In this view from orbit, based on data from the…
The Turbulent Neighborhood of Eta Carina
How do violent stars affect their surroundings? To help find out, astronomers pointed the Hubble Space Telescope to the regions surrounding Eta Carina , a star showing signs that…
A Late Leonid from a Sparse Shower
The 2003 Leonids Meteor Shower contained relatively few meteors. As expected and unlike the last few years , the Earth just did not pass through any dense particle streams left…
IC 405: The Flaming Star Nebula
Rippling dust and gas lanes give the Flaming Star Nebula its name. The red and purple colors of the nebula are present in different regions and are created by different processes.…
Viewing discoveries from 17 December 2003 through 24 November 2003.