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 Galaxy is not a Comet
This gorgeous galaxy and comet portrait was recorded on December 30th, in the skies over Hoogeveen, The Netherlands. The combined series of 60 x 60 second exposures finds the…
Rays from an Unexpected Aurora
This aurora was a bit of a surprise. For starters, on this day in 2002, no intense auroral activity was expected at all. Possibly more surprising, however, the aurora appeared to…
A Year of Spectacular Comets
Two spectacular comets graced Earth's skies during 2007. Both comets became bright enough to be seen by the unaided eye of the casual sky enthusiast . Early in 2007, Comet…
Mammatus Clouds Over Mexico
Normal cloud bottoms are flat because moist warm air that rises and cools will condense into water droplets at a very specific temperature, which usually corresponds to a very…
Saturn's Infrared Glow
Known for its bright ring system and many moons , gas giant Saturn looks strange and unfamiliar in this false-color view from the Cassini spacecraft. In fact, in this Visual and…
A Beautiful Boomerang Nebula
This symmetric cloud dubbed the Boomerang Nebula was created by a high-speed wind of gas and dust blowing from an aging central star at speeds of nearly 600,000 kilometers per…
Earth at Twilight
No sudden, sharp boundary marks the passage of day into night in this gorgeous view of ocean and clouds over our fair planet Earth . Instead, the shadow line or terminator is…
Trifid Pillars and Jets
Dust pillars are like interstellar mountains . They survive because they are more dense than their surroundings, but they are being slowly eroded away by a hostile environment.…
Mars and Orion Over Monument Valley
Welcome to The World At Night. Sharing the night sky seen around the world, this view from Monument Valley , USA includes a picturesque foreground of famous buttes. Buttes are…
Emission Nebula IC 1396
Sprawling across hundreds of light-years, emission nebula IC 1396 mixes glowing cosmic gas and dark dust clouds . Stars are forming in this area, only about 3,000 light-years from…
Moon and Mars Tonight
The Full Moon and a brilliant, ruddy Mars will share the sky tonight. Skygazers can easily enjoy the celestial pairing as the two are separated by a degree or even less. In fact,…
Tyrrhenian Sea and Solstice Sky
Today the Solstice occurs at 0608 Universal Time , the Sun reaching its southernmost declination in planet Earth's sky . Of course, the December Solstice marks the beginning of…
Horizon to Horizon
Scroll right and journey from horizon to horizon as your gaze sweeps through the zenith in the night sky over Beg-Meil, France. Recorded on December 13th, the entertaining…
Reflections on the 1970s
The 1970s are sometimes ignored by astronomers. In particular, this beautiful grouping of reflection nebulae in Orion - NGC 1977, NGC 1975, and NGC 1973 - are usually overlooked…
Stars and Dust through Baade's Window
Billions of stars light up the direction toward the center of our Galaxy . The vast majority of these stars are themselves billions of years old, rivaling their home Milky Way…
Unusual Silica Rich Soil Discovered on Mars
You're rolling across Mars when you unexpectedly uncover some unusually light soil. You stop. You turn. You return to inspect the soil and find out it is almost purely silica --…
Saturn's Ancient Rings
How old are Saturn's rings? No one is quite sure. One possibility is that the rings formed relatively recently in our Solar System's history, perhaps only about 100 million years…
The Holographic Principle
Is this picture worth a thousand words? According to the Holographic Principle , the most information you can get from this image is about 3 x 1065 bits for a normal sized…
Mountains of Creation
This fantastic skyscape lies at the eastern edge of giant stellar nursery W5, about 7,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia . An infrared view from the Spitzer…
Apollo 17: Shorty Crater Panorama
In December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon in the Taurus-Littrow valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited…
T Tauri and Hind's Variable Nebula
The orange star centered in this remarkable telescopic skyview is T Tauri, prototype of the class of T Tauri variable stars. Nearby it is a dusty yellow cosmic cloud historically…
Mars Rover Races to Survive
The Martian rover Spirit is now in the race of its life. The rolling robot is trying to reach an outpost to spend the winter, but it keeps getting bogged down in soft sand on Mars…
The Universe Nearby
What does the universe nearby look like? This plot shows over one and a half million of the brightest stars and galaxies in the nearby universe detected by the Two Micron All Sky…
A Jet from the Sun
What powers the solar wind? Our Sun is known to emit a powerful wind of particles with gusts that can even affect astronauts and satellites orbiting Earth. The cause of the solar…
Viewing discoveries from 2 January 2008 through 10 December 2007.