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.
Persistent Saturnian Auroras
Are Saturn's auroras like Earth's? To help answer this question, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cassini spacecraft monitored Saturn's South Pole simultaneously as Cassini…
Lisbon Honey Moon
The Sun set on Friday the 13th as a full Honey Moon rose, captured in this well-planned time-lapse sequence. Lisbon, Portugal's Christ the King monument is in the foreground,…
Rio at Night
In this night skyscape setting stars trail above the western horizon over Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a venue for the 2014 World Cup . Gentle arcs from the bright, colorful stars of…
Over the Top
The central bulge of our Milky Way Galaxy rises above a sea of clouds in this ethereal scene . An echo of the Milky Way's dark dust lanes, the volcanic peak in foreground…
NGC 6334: The Cat's Paw Nebula
Nebulas are perhaps as famous for being identified with familiar shapes as perhaps cats are for getting into trouble . Still, no known cat could have created the vast Cat's Paw…
V838 Light Echo: The Movie
What caused this outburst of V838 Mon? For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon suddenly became one of the brightest stars in the entire Milky Way Galaxy. Then, just a few months later,…
Preview unavailable
Open the archive entry to view the source media.
APOD Heatmap
The first APOD appeared 19 years ago today. To help celebrate, APOD brings you today an all-sky heatmap of (nearly) 19 years of APOD entries. The brighter a region appears on the…
CMB Dipole: Speeding Through the Universe
Our Earth is not at rest. The Earth moves around the Sun . The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy . The Milky Way Galaxy orbits in the Local Group of Galaxies . The…
New York to London Milky Way
Bright stars of Sagittarius and the center of our Milky Way Galaxy lie just off the wing of a Boeing 747 in this astronomical travel photo . The stratospheric scene was captured…
A Strawberry Moon
June's Full Moon (full phase on June 13, 0411 UT) is traditionally known as the Strawberry Moon or Rose Moon. Of course those names might also describe the appearance of this Full…
The Tarantula Zone
The Tarantula Nebula is more than 1,000 light-years in diameter, a giant star forming region within our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). That cosmic arachnid…
Three Galaxies over New Zealand
No, radio dishes cannot broadcast galaxies. Although they can detect them , the above image features a photogenic superposition during a dark night in New Zealand about two weeks…
M51: X-Rays from the Whirlpool
What if we X-rayed an entire spiral galaxy? This was done (again) recently by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory for the nearby interacting galaxies known as the Whirlpool (M51).…
How to Identify that Light in the Sky
What is that light in the sky? Perhaps one of humanity's more common questions, an answer may result from a few quick observations. For example -- is it moving or blinking? If so,…
Open Cluster NGC 290: A Stellar Jewel Box
Jewels don't shine this bright -- only stars do. Like gems in a jewel box, though, the stars of open cluster NGC 290 glitter in a beautiful display of brightness and color. The…
M16 and the Eagle Nebula
A star cluster around 2 million years young, M16 is surrounded by natal clouds of dust and glowing gas also known as The Eagle Nebula. This beautifully detailed image of the…
Comet PanSTARRS with Galaxy
Sweeping slowly through northern skies, the comet PanSTARRS C/2012 K1 posed for this telescopic portrait on June 2nd in the constellation Ursa Major. Now within the inner solar…
Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2014
Galaxies like colorful pieces of candy fill the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2014. The dimmest galaxies are more than 10 billion times fainter than stars visible to the unaided eye and…
A Green Flash from the Sun
Many think it is just a myth . Others think it is true but its cause isn't known. Adventurers pride themselves on having seen it. It's a green flash from the Sun . The truth is…
WR 104: A Pinwheel Star System
Might this giant pinwheel one-day destroy us? Probably not, but investigation of the unusual star system Wolf-Rayet 104 has turned up an unexpected threat. The unusual pinwheel…
The Space Station Captures a Dragon Capsule
The space station has caught a dragon. Specifically, in mid-April, the International Space Station captured the unmanned SpaceX Dragon capsule sent to resupply the orbiting…
Halo of the Cat's Eye
The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky . Its haunting symmetries are seen in the very central region of this stunning false-color…
Satellite Station and Southern Skies
This clear night skyscape captures the colorful glow of aurora australis , the southern lights, just outside the port city of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, planet Earth . As if…
Planetary Nebula Abell 36
The gorgeous, gaseous shroud of a dying sunlike star, planetary nebula Abell 36 lies a mere 800 light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. At that distance it spans over 1.5…
Viewing discoveries from 22 June 2014 through 30 May 2014.