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.
Trees, Stars, Aurora!
Have you ever seen an aurora? Auroras are occurring again with increasing frequency. With the Sun being unusually dormant over the past four years, the amount of Sun-induced…
Enceladus Backlit by Saturn
This moon is shining by the light of its planet. Specifically, a large portion of Enceladus pictured above is illuminated primarily by sunlight first reflected from the planet…
The Belt of Venus Over Mercedes, Argentina
Although you've surely seen it, you might not have noticed it. During a cloudless twilight , just before sunrise or after sunset , part of the atmosphere above the horizon appears…
Dust of the Orion Nebula
What surrounds a hotbed of star formation? In the case of the Orion Nebula -- dust. The entire Orion field , located about 1600 light years away, is inundated with intricate and…
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…
Comet Garradd and M92
Sweeping slowly through the constellation Hercules, Comet Garradd (C2009/P1) passed with about 0.5 degrees of globular star cluster M92 on February 3. Captured here in its latest…
Inside the Eagle Nebula
In 1995, a now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula…
La Silla Star Trails North and South
Fix your camera to a tripod and you can record graceful trails traced by the stars as planet Earth rotates on its axis . If the tripod is set up at ESO's La Silla Observatory ,…
Red Aurora Over Australia
Why would the sky glow red? Aurora . Last week's solar storms, emanating mostly from active sunspot region 1402 , showered particles on the Earth that excited oxygen atoms high in…
The Helix Nebula from the VISTA Telescope
Will our Sun look like this one day? The Helix Nebula is one of brightest and closest examples of a planetary nebula , a gas cloud created at the end of the life of a Sun-like…
Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP
Behold one of the more detailed images of the Earth yet created. This Blue Marble Earth montage shown above -- created from photographs taken by the Visible/Infrared Imager…
Molecular Cloud Barnard 68
Where did all the stars go? What used to be considered a hole in the sky is now known to astronomers as a dark molecular cloud . Here, a high concentration of dust and molecular…
Planet Aurora Borealis
Illuminated by an eerie greenish light, this remarkable little planet is covered with ice and snow and ringed by tall pine trees. Of course , this little planet is actually planet…
NGC 3239 and SN 2012A
About 40,000 light-years across, pretty, irregular galaxy NGC 3239 lies near the center of this lovely field of galaxies in the galaxy rich constellation Leo . At a distance of…
NGC 4449: Star Stream for a Dwarf Galaxy
A mere 12.5 million light-years from Earth, irregular dwarf galaxy NGC 4449 lies within the confines of Canes Venatici , the constellation of the Hunting Dogs. About the size of…
Opportunity Rover Spots Greeley Haven on Mars
Where on Mars should you spend the winter? As winter approached in the southern hemisphere of Mars last November, the Opportunity rover had just this problem -- it needed a place…
January Aurora Over Norway
What's that in the sky? An aurora. A large coronal mass ejection occurred on our Sun five days ago, throwing a cloud of fast moving electrons, protons, and ions toward the Earth.…
Deep Orion Over the Canary Islands
Which attracts your eye more -- the sky or the ground? On the ground are rocky peaks in Teide National Park on Tenerife Island of the Spanish Canary Islands off the northwestern…
Saturn's Hexagon Comes to Light
Believe it or not, this is the North Pole of Saturn. It is unclear how an unusual hexagonal cloud system that surrounds Saturn's north pole was created, keeps its shape, or how…
Days in the Sun
From solstice to solstice, this six month long exposure compresses time from the 21st of June till the 21st of December, 2011, into a single point of view. Dubbed a solargraph ,…
The Wolf's Moon
A Full Moon rising can be a dramatic celestial sight , and Full Moons can have many names. Captured on January 8 from Östersund, Sweden, this evocative moonrise portrait might…
The Hunter's Stars
Begirt with many a blazing star, Orion, the Hunter , is one of the most easily recognizable constellations . In this night skyscape from January 15, the hunter's stars rise in the…
Cygnus-X: The Inner Workings of a Nearby Star Factory
How do stars form? To help study this complex issue, astronomers took a deep infrared image of Cygnus X , the largest known star forming region in the entire Milky Way Galaxy .…
IC 2118: The Witch Head Nebula
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble -- maybe Macbeth should have consulted the Witch Head Nebula. This suggestively shaped reflection nebula is…
Viewing discoveries from 9 February 2012 through 17 January 2012.