Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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The Great Wall by Moonlight
Last Friday, an almost Full Moon rose as the Sun set , over this mountainous landscape north of Beijing, China. Also near apogee , the farthest point in its elliptical orbit…
Along the Cygnus Wall
The W-shaped ridge of emission featured in this vivid skyscape is known as the Cygnus Wall. Part of a larger emission nebula with a distinctive outline popularly called The North…
Volcano of Fire Erupts Under the Stars
First, there was an unusual smell. Then there was a loud bang. But what appeared to the eye was the most amazing of all. While waiting near midnight to see a possible eruption of…
Aurora over Icelandic Glacier
Several key conditions came together to create this award-winning shot. These included a dark night, few clouds, an epic auroral display, and a body of water that was both calm…
Galaxy and Cluster Create Four Images of Distant Supernova
What are the unusual spots surrounding that galaxy? They are all images of the same supernova. For the first time, a single supernova explosion has been seen split into multiple…
Stars at the Galactic Center
The center of our Milky Way Galaxy is hidden from the prying eyes of optical telescopes by clouds of obscuring dust and gas. But in this stunning vista , the Spitzer Space…
NGC 602 in the Flying Lizard Nebula
Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud , a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies 5 million year young star cluster NGC 602. Surrounded by natal…
Cometary Globule CG4
The faint and somehow menacing cometary globule CG4 reaches through the center of this deep southern skyscape . About 1,300 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Puppis,…
Enhanced Color Caloris
The sprawling Caloris basin on Mercury is one of the solar system's largest impact basins , created during the early history of the solar system by the impact of a large…
Pillars and Jets in the Pelican Nebula
What dark structures arise from the Pelican Nebula? Visible as a bird-shaped nebula toward the constellation of a bird ( Cygnus , the Swan), the Pelican Nebula is a place dotted…
A Dust Devil on Mars
It was late in the northern martian spring when the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spied this local denizen . Tracking across the flat, dust-covered…
Lenticular Cloud, Moon, Mars, Venus
It is not every day that such an interesting cloud photobombs your image. The original plan was to photograph a rare angular conjunction of Mars and Venus that occurred a week and…
Inside the Coma Cluster of Galaxies
Almost every object in the above photograph is a galaxy. The Coma Cluster of Galaxies pictured above is one of the densest clusters known - it contains thousands of galaxies .…
Moon-Venus-Mars Skyline
Taken on February 20, five different exposures made in rapid succession were used to created this tantalizing telephoto image. In combination, they reveal a wide range of…
Long Lovejoy and Little Dumbbell
Buffeted by the solar wind, Comet Lovejoy's crooked ion tail stretches over 3 degrees across this telescopic field of view, recorded on February 20 . The starry background…
Love and War by Moonlight
Venus , named for the Roman goddess of love, and Mars , the war god's namesake, came together by moonlight in this lovely skyview, recorded on February 20 from Charleston, South…
The Rosette Nebula in Hydrogen and Oxygen
The Rosette Nebula is not the only cosmic cloud of gas and dust to evoke the imagery of flowers -- but it is the most famous. At the edge of a large molecular cloud in Monoceros,…
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Unusual Plumes Above Mars
What is creating unusual plumes on Mars? No one is sure . Noted and confirmed by a global contingent of amateur astronomers on photos of the red planet in March 2012, possibly…
The Milky Way Over the Arizona Toadstools
Which is older -- the rocks you see on the ground or the light you see from the sky? Usually its the rocks that are older, with their origin sediments deposited well before light…
The Dark River to Antares
Connecting the Pipe Nebula to the colorful region near bright star Antares is a dark cloud dubbed the Dark River , flowing from the picture's left edge. Murky looking, the Dark…
45 Days in the Sun
From January 11 to February 25 2013, a pinhole camera sat in a field near Budapest, Hungary, planet Earth to create this intriguing solargraph . And for 45 days, an old Antonov…
An Evening Sky Conjunction
Eight years ago, an evening sky held this lovely pairing of a young crescent Moon and brilliant Venus . Seen near the western horizon, the close conjunction and its wintry…
Palomar 12
Palomar 12 was not born here . The stars of the globular cluster, first identified in the Palomar Sky Survey , are younger than those in other globular star clusters that roam the…
Dark Craters and Bright Spots Revealed on Asteroid Ceres
What are those bright spots on asteroid Ceres? As the robotic spacecraft Dawn approaches the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt , the puzzle only deepens. Sharper new images…
Viewing discoveries from 13 March 2015 through 18 February 2015.