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.
Diamond Ring and Shadow Bands
As the total phase of last week's solar eclipse came to an end, sunlight streaming past the edge of the Moon created the fleeting appearance of a glistening diamond ring in the…
A Halo Around the Moon
Have you ever seen a halo around the Moon? This fairly common sight occurs when high thin clouds containing millions of tiny ice crystals cover much of the sky. Each ice crystal…
Leonids Over Monument Valley
What's happening in the sky over Monument Valley ? A meteor shower. Over the past weekend the Leonid meteor shower has been peaking. The image -- actually a composite of six…
NGC 6357: Cathedral to Massive Stars
How massive can a normal star be? Estimates made from distance, brightness and standard solar models had given one star in the open cluster Pismis 24 over 200 times the mass of…
Like a Diamond in the Sky
A dark Sun hung over Queensland, Australia on Wednesday morning during a much anticipated total solar eclipse . Storm clouds threatened to spoil the view along the northern coast,…
Moon Shadow Sequence
On the morning of November 14, the Moon's umbral shadow tracked across northern Australia before heading into the southern Pacific. Captured from a hilltop some 30 miles west of…
Solar Eclipse over Queensland
This month's New Moon brought a total solar eclipse to parts of planet Earth on November 13 (UT) . Most of the total eclipse track fell across the southern Pacific, but the Moon's…
A Solar Eclipse Quilt
Some people are so inspired by solar eclipses that they quilt . Pictured above is a resulting textile from one such inspiration. The 38x38 inch quilt offers impressions of a total…
Meteor and Moonbow over Wallaman Falls
Which feature takes your breath away first in this encompassing panorama of land and sky? The competition is strong with a waterfall, meteor, starfield, and even a moonbow all…
Baily's Beads near Solar Eclipse Totality
Just before the Sun blacks out, something strange occurs. As the Moon moves to completely cover the Sun in a total solar eclipse -- like the one set to occur over parts of…
Polar Ring Galaxy NGC 660
NGC 660 is featured in this cosmic snapshot , a sharp composite of broad and narrow band filter image data from the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea . Over 20 million…
Melotte 15 in the Heart
Cosmic clouds seem to form fantastic shapes in the central regions of emission nebula IC 1805. Of course, the clouds are sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from massive hot…
Arp 188 and the Tadpole's Tail
In this stunning vista , based on image data from the Hubble Legacy Archive, distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The…
Methone: Smooth Egg Moon of Saturn
Why is this moon shaped like a smooth egg? The robotic Cassini spacecraft completed the first flyby ever of Saturn's small moon Methone in May and discovered that the moon has no…
Saturn's Moon Dione in Slight Color
Why does one half of Dione have more craters than the other? Start with the fact that Saturn 's moon Dione has one side that always faces Saturn, and one side that always faces…
Lenticular Clouds Over Washington
Are those UFOs near that mountain? No -- they are multilayered lenticular clouds . Moist air forced to flow upward around mountain tops can create lenticular clouds . Water…
Hunter's Moon over the Alps
A Full Moonset can be a dramatic celestial sight, and Full Moons can have many names. Late October's Full Moon, the second Full Moon after the northern hemisphere autumnal…
The Black Hole in the Milky Way
At the center of our Milky Way Galaxy , a mere 27,000 light-years away, lies a black hole with 4 million times the mass of the Sun. Fondly known as Sagittarius A (pronounced…
Rigel and the Witch Head Nebula
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble -- maybe Macbeth should have consulted the Witch Head Nebula. The suggestively shaped reflection nebula is…
VdB 152: A Ghost in Cepheus
Described as a “dusty curtain” or “ ghostly apparition”, mysterious reflection nebula VdB 152 really is very faint. Far from your neighborhood on this Halloween Night , the cosmic…
Planetary Nebula PK 164 +31.1
Is this what will become of our Sun? Quite possibly. The bubble of expanding gas pictured above is the planetary nebula PK 164 +31.1, the remnants of the atmosphere of a Sun-like…
The Red Spider Planetary Nebula
Oh what a tangled web a planetary nebula can weave. The Red Spider Planetary Nebula shows the complex structure that can result when a normal star ejects its outer gases and…
Phobos: Doomed Moon of Mars
This moon is doomed. Mars , the red planet named for the Roman god of war , has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos , whose names are derived from the Greek for Fear and Panic .…
A Halo for NGC 6164
Beautiful emission nebula NGC 6164 was created by a rare, hot, luminous O-type star, some 40 times as massive as the Sun. Seen at the center of the cosmic cloud, the star is a…
Viewing discoveries from 21 November 2012 through 27 October 2012.