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.
Iapetus: 3D Equatorial Ridge
This bizarre, equatorial ridge extending across and beyond the dark, leading hemisphere of Iapetus gives the two-toned Saturnian moon a distinct walnut shape. With red/blue…
Iapetus in Black and White
Iapetus, Saturn's third largest moon, is a candidate for the strangest moon of Saturn. Tidally locked in its orbit around the ringed gas giant, Iapetus is sometimes called the…
NGC 7129 and NGC 7142
This alluring telescopic image looks toward the constellation Cepheus and an intriguing visual pairing of dusty reflection nebula NGC 7129 (left) and open star cluster NGC 7142.…
Six Rainbows Across Norway
Have you ever seen six rainbows at once? They are not only rare to see -- they are a puzzle to understand. The common rainbow is caused by sunlight internally reflected by the…
A Scorpius Sky Spectacular
If Scorpius looked this good to the unaided eye, humans might remember it better. Scorpius more typically appears as a few bright stars in a well known but rarely pointed out…
Building Galaxies in the Early Universe
What was the very early universe like? To help find out, astronomers pointed the Hubble Space Telescope between bright nearby objects to create one of the deepest images ever --…
The Great Basin on Saturn's Tethys
Some moons wouldn't survive the collision. Tethys , one of Saturn's larger moons at about 1000 kilometers in diameter, survived the collision, but sports today the expansive…
The Voyagers' Message in a Bottle
Launched thirty years ago , NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft are now respectively 15 and 12.5 billion kilometers from the Sun, equivalent to about 14 and 11.5 light-hours…
South Pole Lunar Eclipse
The Moon was up continuously for 14 days in August -- when viewed from the South Pole . But during the total lunar eclipse on August 28, it circled only about 10 degrees above the…
Time Tunnel
Spiky stars are nearby , but fuzzy galaxies are strewn far across the Universe in this cosmic view . Spanning about 1/2 degree on the sky, the pretty picture is the result of…
Aurigids from 47,000 Feet
On September 1, Aurigid meteors filled the sky, in keeping with an innovative prediction of an outburst from this historically tentative meteor shower. The prediction was made by…
A Path Into Victoria Crater
What's inside Victoria Crater? Now that the dust has settled from the regional Martian dust storms that immobilized the rolling Martian rover s, the task ahead has become clear.…
The Colorful Clouds of Rho Ophiuchi
The many spectacular colors of the Rho Ophiuchi (oh'-fee-yu-kee) clouds highlight the many processes that occur there. The blue regions shine primarily by reflected light. Blue…
Lunation
Our Moon's appearance changes nightly. This time-lapse sequence shows what our Moon looks like during a lunation , a complete lunar cycle. As the Moon orbits the Earth , the half…
Kalamalka Lake Eclipse
Recorded on August 28th , this serene total lunar eclipse sequence looks southwest down Kalamalka Lake toward the lights of Coldstream , British Columbia. An exposure every 4…
Stars Forming in Serpens
Stars are forming in a dense molecular cloud a mere 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Serpens Cauda (The Serpent's Tail). At that estimated distance, this sharp,…
Dark Lunar Eclipse
The Moon passed close to the center of Earth's shadow on August 28th . Seen best by skywatchers in western North America, and the Pacific region, the resulting total lunar eclipse…
Gigantic Jets Over Oklahoma
Have you ever seen a gigantic jet? They are extremely rare but tremendously powerful. Gigantic jets are a newly discovered type of lightning discharge between some thunderstorms…
Could Hydrogen Peroxide Life Survive on Mars?
Is there life on Mars? Although no unambiguous evidence for indigenous life on Mars has ever been found, a more speculative question -- could some life forms survive on Mars --…
Huge Void Implicated in Distant Universe
What has created this huge empty volume in the universe? No one is yet sure, and even the extent of the estimated billion - light year void is being researched. The void is not a…
A Total Lunar Eclipse Over North Carolina
This coming Tuesday, our Moon will appear to disappear . A similar total lunar eclipse is seen above in a time lapse image captured in 2003 over North Carolina , USA . As the…
Just Passing Through
M33 is a big, beautiful spiral galaxy a mere 3 million light-years away, understandably a popular target for enthusiastic astro-imagers. Just as understandably, interfering…
Astronomer's Moon
Jupiter is an astronomer's planet -- its large size and contrasting global cloud belts and zones allow detailed studies with a range of earthbound telescopes . On the other hand,…
Southern Moonscape
The Moon's south pole is near the top of this sharp telescopic view looking across the southern lunar highlands . Recorded on August 3rd from Tecumseh , Oklahoma, planet Earth,…
Viewing discoveries from 15 September 2007 through 23 August 2007.