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.
Storm Alley on Saturn
What causes storms on Saturn? To help find out, scientists commanded the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn to inspect a circulating band of clouds nicknamed “Storm…
Spooky Star Forming Region DR 6
How could stars form such a spooky and familiar shape as a human skull? First, the complex process of star formation creates nebulas of many shapes and sizes -- it is human…
Halloween and the Ghost Head Nebula
Halloween's origin is ancient and astronomical. Since the fifth century BC, Halloween has been celebrated as a cross-quarter day , a day halfway between an equinox (equal day /…
Pumpkin Moon
Does this look familiar? Red and orange hues haunting the face of the Moon should remind you of the October 27th total lunar eclipse. Created from exposures taken at intervals of…
Red Moon Triple
Some thought of baseball and some thought of Halloween during October 27th's widely viewed total lunar eclipse. Sliding through Earth's shadow, the Moon turned haunting shades of…
Tantalizing Titan
Normally hidden by a thick, hazy atmosphere, tantalizing features on Titan's surface appear in this false-color view . The image was recorded as the Cassini spacecraft approached…
Total Lunar Eclipse Tonight
Go outside tonight and see the total lunar eclipse. Tonight's eclipse is easy and convenient for much of the world to see. Anyone who can spot a full Moon can see it fade out as…
Titan Through the Haze
What are these surface features on Titan ? This planet-sized moon of Saturn had much of its south polar surface imaged during an initial flyby by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini…
The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies
Here is one of the largest objects that anyone will ever see on the sky. Each of the fuzzy blobs in the above picture is a galaxy, together making up the Perseus Cluster , one of…
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…
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…
SOFIA's Mirror
The candy-dish appearance of this high-tech astronomical mirror is striking. Made of a special glass ceramic material called Zerodur , it actually measures 2.7 meters across. The…
Apogee Moon, Perigee Moon
Why don't these pieces fit? This third quarter Moon (left) and first quarter Moon were both photographed during the last lunar cycle or lunation with the same telescope and…
NGC 281: Cluster, Clouds, and Globules
NGC 281 is a busy workshop of star formation. Prominent features include a small open cluster of stars, a diffuse red-glowing emission nebula , large lanes of obscuring gas and…
Old Planetary Dust Disks Found by SST
Why are some older stars surrounded by dust? Observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope by a team led by George Rieke ( U. Arizona ) were expected to show that young stars, on…
Southern Saturn from Cassini
What happens to Saturn's pervasive clouds at its South Pole? Visible in the above image of Saturn are bright bands , dark belts and a dark spot right over the South Pole . The…
IC 418: The Spirograph Nebula
What is creating the strange texture of IC 418? Dubbed the Spirograph Nebula for its resemblance to drawings from a cyclical drawing tool , planetary nebula IC 418 shows patterns…
The Bubbling Cauldron of NGC 3079
Edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 3079 is a mere 50 million light-years away toward the constellation Ursa Major. Shown in this stunning false-color Hubble Space Telescope image, the…
Night MAGIC
Is it magic ? On a rare foggy night, mysterious laser beams seem to play across the MAGIC telescope at Roque de los Muchachos on the Canary Island of La Palma . The lasers are…
Glimpse of a Globular Star Cluster
Not a glimpse of this cluster of stars can be seen in the inset visible light image (lower right). Still, the infrared view from the Spitzer Space Telescope reveals a massive…
Contrail Clutter over Georgia
Artificial clouds made by humans may become so common they change the Earth's climate. The long thin cloud streaks that dominate the above satellite photograph of Georgia are…
M3: Inconstant Star Cluster
Star clusters appear constant because photographs of them are frozen in time. In reality, though, cluster stars swarm the center and frequently fluctuate in brightness. Although…
Mosaic of Endurance Crater on Mars
Where should this Martian rover explore next? Possible choices for the Opportunity rover team on Earth in early August were to send the Martian robot inside Endurance crater…
Sunspot Loops in Ultraviolet
It was a quiet day on the Sun . The above image shows, however, that even during off days the Sun's surface is a busy place. Shown in ultraviolet light , the relatively cool dark…
Viewing discoveries from 2 November 2004 through 10 October 2004.