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.
Noctilucent Clouds Over Edmonton
Sometimes it's night on the ground but day in the air. As the Earth rotates to eclipse the Sun, sunset rises up from the ground. Therefore, at sunset on the ground, sunlight still…
Vesta Vista
What does the surface of asteroid Vesta look like? The brightest asteroid in the Solar System and the object which takes up about 10 percent of the entire mass of the main…
A Busy Space Walk at the Space Station
What's that astronaut doing? Unloading a space shuttle -- for the last time. After the space shuttle Atlantis docked with the International Space Station (ISS) last week,…
Lewin's Challenge: 360 Degree Star Trails
You could be the first person ever to take a real single-exposure image like this. The above image from Vienna, Austria is not real in the sense that the 360 degree star trails in…
Starry Night over Dubai
A starry night over the city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is really not so starry . In fact, the Moon is the only celestial beacon to come close to competing with city…
NGC 3314: When Galaxies Overlap
NGC 3314 is actually two large spiral galaxies which just happen to almost exactly line up. The foreground spiral is viewed nearly face-on , its pinwheel shape defined by young…
Neptune: Once Around
Neptune rotates once on its axis in about 16 hours. So, spaced about 4 hours apart these 4 images of the solar system's most distant gas giant cover one Neptune day. Recorded by…
Atlantis' Last Approach
For the last time, the US Space Shuttle has approached the International Space Station (ISS). Following a dramatic launch from Cape Canaveral last week that was witnessed by an…
The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies
Here is one of the largest objects that anyone will ever see on the sky. Each of these fuzzy blobs is a galaxy, together making up the Perseus Cluster , one of the closest…
A Milky Way Band
Most bright stars in our Milky Way Galaxy reside in a disk. Since our Sun also resides in this disk, these stars appear to us as a diffuse band that circles the sky. The above…
Atlantis Reflection
Space shuttle orbiter Atlantis left planet Earth on Friday, July 8, embarking on the STS-135 mission to the International Space Station. The momentous launch was the final one in…
Saturn Storm Panoramas
These tantalizing panoramas follow a remarkable giant storm encircling the northern hemisphere of ringed planet Saturn . Still active, the roiling storm clouds were captured in…
Arp 78: Peculiar Galaxy in Aries
Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78 is found within the boundaries of the head strong constellation Aries , some 100 million light-years beyond the stars and nebulae of our Milky Way…
Sunrise at Tycho
Tycho crater's central peak complex casts a long, dark shadow near local sunrise in this spectacular lunarscape . The dramatic oblique view was recorded on June 10 by the Lunar…
A Triangular Shadow of a Large Volcano
Why does the shadow of this volcano look like a triangle? The Mount Teide volcano itself does not have the strictly pyramidal shape that its geometric shadow might suggest. The…
Alpha Centauri: The Closest Star System
The closest star system to the Sun is the Alpha Centauri system . Of the three stars in the system, the dimmest -- called Proxima Centauri -- is actually the nearest star . The…
Moon and Venus at Dawn
Brilliant Venus and a thin crescent Moon stood together above the eastern horizon just before sunrise on June 30. The lovely celestial pairing is captured in this colorful…
VAR!
In the 1920s, examining photographic plates from the Mt. Wilson Observatory's 100 inch telescope, Edwin Hubble determined the distance to the Andromeda Nebula , decisively…
Star Factory Messier 17
Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, the star factory known as Messier 17 lies some 5,500 light-years away in the nebula-rich constellation Sagittarius . At that distance,…
Abell 2744: Pandora's Cluster of Galaxies
Why is this cluster of galaxies so jumbled? Far from a smooth distribution, Abell 2744 not only has knots of galaxies, but the X-ray emitting hot gas (colored red) in the cluster…
Stardust and Betelgeuse
An expansive nebula of dust is seen to surround red supergiant star Betegeuse in this remarkable high resolution composite, an infrared VLT image from the European Southern…
Stars and Dust Across Corona Australis
Cosmic dust clouds sprawl across a rich field of stars in this sweeping telescopic vista near the northern boundary of Corona Australis , the Southern Crown. Probably less than…
NGC 3132: The Eight Burst Nebula
It's the dim star, not the bright one, near the center of NGC 3132 that created this odd but beautiful planetary nebula . Nicknamed the Eight-Burst Nebula and the Southern Ring…
Eclipse over the Acropolis
The total phase of the June 15 lunar eclipse lasted an impressive 100 minutes. Its entire duration is covered in this composite of a regular sequence of digital camera exposures,…
Viewing discoveries from 20 July 2011 through 25 June 2011.