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.
Apollo 11 Landing Site Panorama
Have you seen a panorama from another world lately? Assembled from high-resolution scans of the original film frames, this one sweeps across the magnificent desolation of the…
Reflections on the 1970s
The 1970s are sometimes ignored by astronomers, like this beautiful grouping of reflection nebulae in Orion - NGC 1977, NGC 1975, and NGC 1973 - usually overlooked in favor of the…
NGC 7331 and Beyond
Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 7331 is often touted as an analog to our own Milky Way . About 50 million light-years distant in the northern constellation Pegasus , NGC 7331 was…
Geminid Fireball over Mount Balang
This was a sky to remember. While viewing the Geminids meteor shower a few days ago, a bright fireball was captured over Mt. Balang , China with particularly picturesque…
W5: Pillars of Star Formation
How do stars form? Images of the star forming region W5 like those in the infrared by NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite provide clear clues with…
The Potsdam Gravity Potato
Why do some places on Earth have higher gravity than others? Sometimes the reason is unknown. To help better understand the Earth's surface , sensitive measurements by the…
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…
The Infrared Visible Andromeda
This remarkable synthetic color composite image was assembled from archives of visible light and infrared astronomy image data. The field of view spans the Andromeda Galaxy (M31),…
Crystals on Mars
This extreme close-up , a mosaic from the Mars Hand Lens Imager ( MAHLI ) on the Curiosity rover, spans a breathtaking 5 centimeters. It captures what appear to be elongated…
Moondog Night
In this night scene from the early hours of November 14, light from a last quarter Moon illuminates clouds above the mountaintop domes of Kitt Peak National Observatory near…
The Reddening of M71
Now known to be a globular star cluster at the tender age of 10 billion years, M71 is a mere 13,000 light-years away within the narrow boundaries of the faint constellation…
The Flame Nebula in Visible and Infrared
What lights up the Flame Nebula? Fifteen hundred light years away towards the constellation of Orion lies a nebula which, from its glow and dark dust lanes, appears, on the left,…
Wanderers
How far out will humanity explore? If this video's fusion of real space imagery and fictional space visualizations is on the right track, then at least the Solar System. Some of…
Aurora Shimmer, Meteor Flash
Northern Lights , or aurora borealis, haunted skies over the island of Kvaløya, near Tromsø Norway on 2009 December 13. This 30 second long exposure records their shimmering glow…
Orion Launch
Headed for two orbits of planet Earth and a splashdown in the Pacific, Orion blazed into the early morning sky on Friday at 7:05am ET. The spacecraft was launched atop a United…
Milky Way over Moon Valley
Our Milky Way Galaxy arcs over a desolate landscape in this fantastic panoramic night skyview . The otherworldly scene looks across the arid, eroded terrain of the Valle de la…
Plato and the Lunar Alps
The dark-floored, 95 kilometer wide crater Plato and sunlit peaks of the lunar Alps (Montes Alpes) are highlighted in this sharp digital snapshot of the Moon's surface . While the…
Sharpless 249 and the Jellyfish Nebula
Normally faint and elusive, the Jellyfish Nebula is caught in this alluring telescopic mosaic. The scene is anchored right and left by two bright stars, Mu and Eta Geminorum, at…
Eta Carinae and the Expanding Homunculus Nebula
How did the Eta Carinae star system create this unusual expanding nebula? No one knows for sure. About 170 years ago, the southern star system Eta Carinae (Eta Car) mysteriously…
Stars and Dust Pillars in NGC 7822 from WISE
Hot, young stars and cosmic pillars of gas and dust seem to crowd into NGC 7822. At the edge of a giant molecular cloud toward the northern constellation Cepheus , this glowing…
The Seahorse of the Large Magellanic Cloud
It may look like a grazing seahorse , but the dark object toward the image right is actually a pillar of smoky dust about 20 light years long. The curiously-shaped dust structure…
3D 67P
Get out your red/blue glasses and float next to a comet! The Rosetta mission lander Philae's ROLIS camera snapped the two frames used to create this stereo anaglyph for 3D viewing…
Portrait of NGC 281
Look through the cosmic cloud cataloged as NGC 281 and you might miss the stars of open cluster IC 1590 . But, formed within the nebula , that cluster's young, massive stars…
Galileo's Europa Remastered
Looping through the Jovian system in the late 1990s, the Galileo spacecraft recorded stunning views of Europa and uncovered evidence that the moon's icy surface likely hides a…
Viewing discoveries from 20 December 2014 through 27 November 2014.