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.
Gas and Snow Jets from Comet Hartley 2
Unusual jets have been discovered emanating from Comet Hartley 2. The EPOXI spacecraft imaged the jets in unprecedented detail during its flyby of the comet earlier this month.…
A Dark Dune Field in Proctor Crater on Mars
Was this image taken with a telescope or a microscope? Perhaps this clue will help: if the dark forms were bacteria , they would each span over football field across. What is…
A Massive Star in NGC 6357
For reasons unknown, NGC 6357 is forming some of the most massive stars ever discovered. One such massive star, near the center of NGC 6357 , is framed above carving out its own…
Stephan's Quintet
The first identified compact galaxy group, Stephan's Quintet is featured in this eye-catching image constructed with data drawn from the extensive Hubble Legacy Archive . About…
Nebulae in the Northern Cross
Explore a beautiful and complex region of nebulae strewn along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy in this widefield skyscape. The image emphasizes cosmic gas clouds in a 25 by 25…
Sisters of the Dusty Sky
Hurtling through a cosmic dust cloud some 400 light-years away, the lovely Pleiades or Seven Sisters star cluster is well-known for its striking blue reflection nebulae . In the…
Frosted Leaf Orion
Sometimes, you can put some night sky in your art. Captured above Japan earlier this month, a picturesque night sky was photographed behind a picturesque frosted leaf. The…
Atoms-for-Peace Galaxy Collision
Is this what will become of our Milky Way Galaxy? Perhaps if we collide with the Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years, it might. Pictured above is NGC 7252, a jumble of stars…
Home from Above
There's no place like home . Peering out of the windows of the International Space Station (ISS), astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson takes in the planet on which we were all born, and…
Multiverses: Do Other Universes Exist?
Do nearly exact copies of you exist in other universes? If one or more of the multiverse hypotheses is correct, then quite possibly they do. In the above computer-enhanced…
Spiral Galaxy M66
Big beautiful spiral galaxy M66 lies a mere 35 million light-years away. About 100 thousand light-years across, the gorgeous island universe is well known to astronomers as a…
NGC 7023: The Iris Nebula
Like delicate cosmic petals, these clouds of interstellar dust and gas have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile star fields of the constellation Cepheus . Sometimes…
Two Views, Two Crescents
Venus rose in a glowing dawn sky on November 5th, just before the Sun. For early morning risers, its brilliant crescent phase was best appreciated with binoculars or a small…
Huge Gamma Ray Bubbles Found Around Milky Way
Did you know that our Milky Way Galaxy has huge bubbles emitting gamma rays from the direction of the galactic center? Neither did anybody. As the data from the Earth-orbiting…
NGC 4452: An Extremely Thin Galaxy
Why is there a line segment on the sky? In one of the more precise alignments known in the universe, what is pictured above is actually a disk galaxy being seen almost perfectly…
700 Kilometers Below Comet Hartley 2
What kind of comet is this? Last week, NASA's robotic EPOXI spacecraft whizzed past Comet 103P/Hartley , also known as Comet Hartley 2, and recorded images and data that are both…
The Center of Centaurus A
A fantastic jumble of young blue star clusters, gigantic glowing gas clouds, and imposing dark dust lanes surrounds the central region of the active galaxy Centaurus A. This…
The Elephant's Trunk in IC 1396
Like an illustration in a galactic Just So Story , the Elephant's Trunk Nebula winds through the emission nebula and young star cluster complex IC 1396 , in the high and far off…
Comet Hartley 2 Flyby
Follow these 5 frames clockwise starting from the top left to track the view from the EPOXI mission spacecraft as it approached, passed under, and then looked back at the nucleus…
Night Lights
Constellations of lights sprawl across this night scene , but they don't belong in the skies of planet Earth . Instead, the view looks down from the International Space Station as…
The Necklace Nebula
The small constellation Sagitta sports this large piece of cosmic jewelry, dubbed the Necklace Nebula. The newly discovered example of a ring-shaped planetary nebula is about…
Spicules: Jets on the Sun
Imagine a pipe as wide as a state and as long as the Earth. Now imagine that this pipe is filled with hot gas moving 50,000 kilometers per hour. Further imagine that this pipe is…
The Milky Way Over the Peak of the Furnace
On Reunion Island , it is known simply as “The Volcano.” To others, it is known as the Piton de la Fournaise , which is French for the Peak of the Furnace. It is one of the most…
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 /…
Viewing discoveries from 23 November 2010 through 31 October 2010.