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.
Messier 77
Face-on spiral galaxy M77 lies a mere 47 million light-years away toward the aquatic constellation Cetus . At that estimated distance, the gorgeous island universe is about 100…
Ring of Fire over Monument Valley
As the New Moon continues this season's celestial shadow play, an annular solar eclipse track begins in western Australia at 22:30 UT on May 9 -- near sunrise on May 10 local time…
Earth's Major Telescopes Investigate GRB 130427A
A tremendous explosion has occurred in the nearby universe and major telescopes across Earth and space are investigating. Dubbed GRB 130427A, the gamma-ray burst was first…
Galaxy Cove Vista
To see a vista like this takes patience, hiking, and a camera. Patience was needed in searching out just the right place and waiting for just the right time. A short hike was…
Tails of Comet Lemmon
What caused the interestingly intricate tails that Comet Lemmon displayed earlier this year? First of all, just about every comet that nears the Sun displays two tails: a dust…
A Supercell Thunderstorm Cloud Over Montana
Is that a spaceship or a cloud? Although it may seem like an alien mothership , it's actually a impressive thunderstorm cloud called a supercell . Such colossal storm systems…
Hungarian Spring Eclipse
Last week, as the Sun set a Full Moon rose over the springtime landscape of Tihany, Hungary on the northern shores of Lake Balaton . As it climbed into the clear sky, the Moon…
Horsehead: A Wider View
Combined image data from the massive, ground-based VISTA telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope was used to create this wide perspective of the interstellar landscape…
Saturn Hurricane
Acquiring its first sunlit views of far northern Saturn late last year , the Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera recorded this stunning image of the vortex at the ringed…
Omega Centauri: The Brightest Globular Cluster
This huge ball of stars predates our Sun. Long before humankind evolved, before dinosaurs roamed , and even before our Earth existed, ancient globs of stars condensed and orbited…
Humanity Explores the Solar System
What spacecraft is humanity currently using to explore our Solar System ? Presently, every inner planet has at least one robotic explorer , while several others are monitoring our…
Milky Way and Stone Tree
What's that next to the Milky Way? An unusual natural rock formation known as Roque Cinchado or Stone Tree found on the Spanish Canary Island of Tenerife . A famous icon , Roque…
A Raging Storm System on Saturn
It was one of the largest and longest lived storms ever recorded in our Solar System. First seen in late 2010, the above cloud formation in the northern hemisphere of Saturn…
Sharp Stereo
Get out your red/blue glasses and gaze across the floor of Gale crater on Mars. From your vantage point on the deck of the Curiosity Rover Mount Sharp, the crater's 5 kilometer…
A Year on the Sun
Our solar system's miasma of incandescent plasma , the Sun may look a little scary here. The picture is a composite of 25 images recorded in extreme ultraviolet light by the…
Lunar Eclipses
The dark, inner shadow of planet Earth is called the umbra . Shaped like a cone extending into space, it has a circular cross section and is most easily seen during a lunar…
Wringing a Wet Towel in Orbit
What happens if you wring out a wet towel while floating in space? The water shouldn't fall toward the floor because while orbiting the Earth, free falling objects will appear to…
X-rays from Supernova Remnant SN 1006
What looks like a puff-ball is surely the remains of the brightest supernova in recorded human history. In 1006 AD , it was recorded as lighting up the nighttime skies above areas…
The Horsehead Nebula in Infrared from Hubble
While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the…
The Big Dipper
Do you see it? This common question frequently precedes the rediscovery of one of the most commonly recognized configurations of stars on the northern sky: the Big Dipper . This…
Airglow, Gegenschein, and Milky Way
As far as the eye could see , it was a dark night at Las Campanas Observatory in the southern Atacama desert of Chile. But near local midnight on April 11, this mosaic of 3 minute…
NGC 1788 and the Witch's Whiskers
This skyscape finds an esthetic balance of interstellar dust and gas residing in the suburbs of the nebula rich constellation of Orion. Reflecting the light of bright star Rigel,…
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,…
Mt. Hood and a Lenticular Cloud
What kind of cloud is next to that mountain? A lenticular . This type of cloud forms in air that passes over a mountain, rises up again, and cools past the dew point -- so what…
Viewing discoveries from 10 May 2013 through 17 April 2013.