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.
Comet Between Fireworks and Lightning
Sometimes the sky itself is the best show in town. In January 2007, people from Perth , Australia gathered on a local beach to watch a sky light up with delights near and far.…
The Mileage of Light
If you're driving down a dark road on a starry night, you might want to check the odometer. Earlier this month, when traveling astronomer Dennis Mammana did he was greeted with…
Messier Marathon
In this action scene , red night vision lights, green laser pointers, tripods and telescopes in faint silhouette surround intrepid sky gazers embarked on the 10th annual Iran…
Supernova Sonata
To create a sonata from supernovae, first you have to find the supernovae. To do that composers Alex Parker and Melissa Graham relied on the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT)…
Space Shuttle Rising
What's that rising from the clouds? The space shuttle. If you looked out the window of an airplane at just the right place and time last week, you could have seen something very…
Three Arches Above Utah
How many arches can you count in the above image? If you count both spans of the Double Arch in the Arches National Park in Utah , USA , then two. But since the above image was…
An Unexpected Flare from the Crab Nebula
Why does the Crab Nebula flare? No one is sure. The unusual behavior, discovered over the past few years, seems only to occur in very high energy light -- gamma rays . As recently…
Io: The Prometheus Plume
What's happening on Jupiter's moon Io? Two sulfurous eruptions are visible on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io in this color composite image from the robotic Galileo spacecraft that…
Planets, Endeavour at Dawn
When dawn broke over Kennedy Space Center on Monday, May 16, the space shuttle orbiter Endeavour still stood on pad 39A. Its final launch, on mission STS-134 to the International…
A Journey Through the Night Sky
Majestic nebulae and stars of our Milky Way Galaxy stretch across this panoramic image of the entire night sky. At full resolution, the 5 gigapixel mosaic was stitched together…
NGC 253: Close Up
This dusty island universe is one of the brightest spiral galaxies in planet Earth's sky . Seen nearly edge-on, NGC 253 is only 13 million light-years away, the largest member of…
The Last Launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour
Two days ago, powerful yet controlled explosions rocketed the Space Shuttle Endeavour on its final trip into Earth orbit. The above image was taken seconds after liftoff as the…
A Starry Night of Iceland
On some nights, the sky is the best show in town. On this night, the sky was not only the best show in town, but a composite image of the sky won an international competition for…
The Sombrero Galaxy from Hubble
What's going on in the center of this spiral galaxy? Named the Sombrero Galaxy for its hat-like resemblance, M104 features a prominent dust lane and a bright halo of stars and…
The Little Dipper
At 2nd magnitude, Polaris is far from the brightest star in the night sky. But it is the brightest star at the left of this well-composed, starry mosaic spanning about 23 degrees…
A Beautiful Trifid
The beautiful Trifid Nebula is a cosmic study in colorful contrasts. Also known as M20, it lies about 5,000 light-years away toward the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. A…
Enceladus Looms
A sunlit crescent of Saturn's moon Enceladus looms above the night side of Saturn in this dramatic image from the Cassini spacecraft . Captured on August 13, 2010 looking in a…
The Southern Cliff in the Lagoon
Undulating bright ridges and dusty clouds cross this close-up of the nearby star forming region M8 , also known as the Lagoon Nebula . A sharp, false-color composite of narrow…
Gravity Probe B Confirms the Existence of Gravitomagnetism
Does gravity have a magnetic counterpart? Spin any electric charge and you get a magnetic field. Spin any mass and, according to Einstein, you should get a very slight effect that…
Wonder and Mystery above the Very Large Telescopes
What's that bright orange dot above the large telescope on the right? Even seasoned sky enthusiasts might ponder the origin of the orange orb seen by scrolling across this…
Shadow of a Martian Robot
What if you saw your shadow on Mars and it wasn't human ? Then you might be the Opportunity rover currently exploring Mars. Opportunity and sister robot Spirit have been probing…
Dawn of the Planets
This month, four of the five naked-eye planets gather along the eastern horizon near dawn. The celestial grouping is seen here just before sunrise on May 5, from a beach near…
Farther Along
What is humanity's most distant spacecraft? Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 now holds that distinction at 17.5 billion kilometers from the Sun. That corresponds to 16 light-hours or…
50 Years Ago: Freedom 7 Flies
Fifty years ago, near the dawn of the space age , NASA controllers “lit the candle” and sent Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard arcing into space atop a Redstone rocket . His cramped…
Viewing discoveries from 29 May 2011 through 5 May 2011.