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.
A Picturesque Equinox Sunset
What's that at the end of the road? The Sun. Many towns have roads that run east - west, and on two days each year, the Sun rises and sets right down the middle . Today is one of…
3D Ahuna Mons
Get out your red/blue glasses and gaze across Ceres at mysterious mountain Ahuna Mons . Shown in a 3D anaglyph perspective view , the mosaicked image data was captured in December…
The W in Cassiopeia
A familiar, zigzag, W pattern in northern constellation Cassiopeia is traced by five bright stars in this colorful and broad mosaic. Stretching about 15 degrees across rich…
Close Comet and Large Magellanic Cloud
Sporting a surprisingly bright , lovely green coma Comet 252P/Linear poses next to the Large Magellanic Cloud in this southern skyscape. The stack of telephoto exposures was…
A Phoenix Aurora over Iceland
All of the other aurora watchers had gone home. By 3:30 am in Iceland , on a quiet night last September, much of that night's auroras had died down. Suddenly though, a new burst…
Cheering a Total Solar Eclipse
What would you do if you saw the Sun disappear? Quite possibly: cheer. That's what many exuberant sky watchers did across Indonesia during a total eclipse of the Sun last week.…
Dark Nebulas across Taurus
Sometimes even the dark dust of interstellar space has a serene beauty. One such place occurs toward the constellation of Taurus. The filaments featured here can be found on the…
Neon Saturn
If seen in the right light, Saturn glows like a neon sign. Although Saturn has comparatively little of the element neon , a composite image false-colored in three bands of…
The Flash Spectrum of the Sun
In a flash, the visible spectrum of the Sun changed from absorption to emission on March 9 during the total solar eclipse. That fleeting moment , at the beginning the total…
Lunar Shadow Transit
This snapshot from deep space captures planet Earth on March 9 . The shadow of its large moon is falling on the planet's sunlit hemisphere. Tracking toward the east (left to…
Dark Sun over Ternate
A dark Sun hangs in the clearing sky over a volcanic planet in this morning sea and skycape. It was taken during this week's total solar eclipse , a dramatic snapshot from along…
Edge-On Galaxy NGC 5866
Why is this galaxy so thin? Many disk galaxies are actually just as thin as NGC 5866, pictured above , but are not seen edge-on from our vantage point. One galaxy that is situated…
Solar Eclipse Shoes in the Classroom
The total solar eclipse of March 8/9 will be the only total eclipse in 2016. Crossing the international date line, the New Moon's dark shadow traces a limited, narrow path for…
Mystery Feature Now Disappears in Titan Lake
What is that changing object in a cold hydrocarbon sea of Titan? Radar images from the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn have been recording the surface of the…
A Solar Prominence Eruption from SDO
One of the most spectacular solar sights is an erupting prominence. In 2011, NASA's Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamic Observatory spacecraft imaged an impressively large prominence…
Cities at Night
Looking toward the south from an altitude of 400 kilometers, this stunning snapshot from orbit finds bright lights of Tokyo and cities across central and southern Japan, planet…
Sculptor Galaxy NGC 134
NGC 134 is probably not the best known spiral galaxy in the constellation Sculptor . Still, the tantalizing island universe is a clearly a telescopic treasure in southern skies.…
Moons and Jupiter
Some of the Solar System's largest moons rose together on February 23. On that night, a twilight pairing of a waning gibbous Moon and Jupiter was captured in this sharp telescopic…
Unusual Clouds over Hong Kong
What's that in the sky? Earlier this month, in the sky high above Hong Kong , China , not just one unusual type of cloud appeared -- but two. In the foreground was a long…
NGC 3310: A Starburst Spiral Galaxy
The party is still going on in spiral galaxy NGC 3310. Roughly 100 million years ago, NGC 3310 likely collided with a smaller galaxy causing the large spiral galaxy to light up…
Julius Caesar and Leap Days
Today, February 29th, is a leap day - a relatively rare occurrence. In 46 BC, Julius Caesar , featured here in a self-decreed minted coin, created a calendar system that added one…
IC 1848: The Soul Nebula
Stars are forming in the Soul of the Queen of Aethopia. More specifically, a large star forming region called the Soul Nebula can be found in the direction of the constellation…
Northern Pluto
Gaze across the frozen canyons of northern Pluto in this contrast enhanced color scene, imaged last July by the New Horizons spacecraft. Currently known as Lowell Regio, the…
The Tarantula Nebula
The Tarantula Nebula is more than a thousand light-years in diameter, a giant star forming region within nearby satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud , about 180 thousand…
Viewing discoveries from 20 March 2016 through 26 February 2016.