Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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Golden Gate Sunset: Green Flash
The setting is San Francisco Bay, the time is sunset, and the bridge is the Golden Gate. What you are about to see is an unexpected double sunset ending with a rare green flash.…
Nebulae in Auriga
Rich in star clusters and nebulae, the ancient constellation of the Charioteer ( Auriga ) rides high in northern winter night skies. Composed from narrow and broadband filter data…
In the Center of Spiral Galaxy NGC 3521
This huge swirling mass of stars, gas, and dust occurs near the center of a nearby spiral galaxy. Gorgeous spiral NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years distant, toward the…
Dark Sand Cascades on Mars
They might look like trees on Mars, but they're not. Groups of dark brown streaks have been photographed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on melting pinkish sand dunes covered…
Rosetta and Comet Outbound
Not a bright comet , 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko now sweeps slowly through planet Earth's predawn skies near the line-up of planets along the ecliptic . Still, this composite of…
Gravity's Grin
Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, published 100 years ago this month, predicted the phenomenon of gravitational lensing. And that's what gives these distant galaxies…
Planets of the Morning
Planet Earth's horizon stretches across this recent Solar System group portrait, seen from the southern hemisphere's Las Campanas Observatory. Taken before dawn it traces the…
Unusual Pits Discovered on Pluto
Why are there unusual pits on Pluto? The indentations were discovered during the New Horizons spacecraft's flyby of the dwarf planet in July. The largest pits span a kilometer…
Aurora over Clouds
Auroras usually occur high above the clouds. The auroral glow is created when fast-moving particles ejected from the Sun impact the Earth's magnetosphere , from which charged…
A 212-Hour Exposure of Orion
The constellation of Orion is much more than three stars in a row. It is a direction in space that is rich with impressive nebulas. To better appreciate this well-known swath of…
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 .…
Recycling NGC 5291
Following an ancient galaxy-galaxy collision 200 million light-years from Earth, debris from a gas-rich galaxy, NGC 5291, was flung far into intergalactic space. NGC 5291 and the…
Leonids and Friends
Leonid meteors rained down on planet Earth this week, the annual shower of dusty debris from the orbit of Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle . Leonids streak through this composite night…
Centaurus A
What's the closest active galaxy to planet Earth? That would be Centaurus A, only 11 million light-years distant. Spanning over 60,000 light-years, the peculiar elliptical galaxy…
A Sudden Jet on Comet 67P
There she blows ! A dramatic demonstration of how short-lived some comet jets can be was documented in late July by the robotic Rosetta spacecraft orbiting the nucleus of Comet…
The Pelican Nebula in Gas, Dust, and Stars
The Pelican Nebula is slowly being transformed. IC 5070, the official designation, is divided from the larger North America Nebula by a molecular cloud filled with dark dust . The…
A Blazing Fireball between the Orion Nebula and Rigel
What's happening to that meteor? A few days ago, a bright fireball was photographed from the Alps mountain range in Switzerland as it blazed across the sky. The fireball, likely…
Leonids Over Monument Valley
There was a shower over Monument Valley -- but not water. Meteors. The featured image -- actually a composite of six exposures of about 30 seconds each -- was taken in 2001, a…
Wright Mons on Pluto
Long shadows are cast by a low Sun across this rugged looking terrain. Captured by New Horizons, the scene is found just south of the southern tip Sputnik Planum, the informally…
The Tadpoles of IC 410
This telescopic close-up shows off the otherwise faint emission nebula IC 410. It also features two remarkable inhabitants of the cosmic pond of gas and dust below and right of…
Kenya Morning Moon, Planets, and Taurid
On November 8, a waning crescent Moon joined the continuing parade of planets in Earth's early morning skies. Captured here from Amboseli National Park, Kenya, even the…
An Unexpected Rocket Plume over San Francisco
What is that unusual light in the sky? A common question, this particular light was not only bright but moving and expanding. It appeared just as the astrophotographer and his…
AE Aurigae and the Flaming Star Nebula
Is star AE Aurigae on fire? No. Even though AE Aurigae is named the flaming star, the surrounding nebula IC 405 is named the Flaming Star Nebula , and the region appears to have…
Assembly of The International Space Station
It is the largest and most sophisticated object ever built off the Earth. It has taken numerous spaceflights and over a decade to construct. The International Space Station (ISS)…
Viewing discoveries from 2 December 2015 through 9 November 2015.