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.
Halo from Atacama
Influenced by the strong Pacific El Nino , cloudy skies have more often come to Chile's high Atacama Desert this season, despite its reputation as an astronomer's paradise.…
The Orion Nebula in Visible and Infrared
The Great Nebula in Orion is a colorful place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion . Long exposure, multi-wavelength images…
Clouds of the Carina Nebula
What forms lurk in the mists of the Carina Nebula? The dark ominous figures are actually molecular clouds , knots of molecular gas and dust so thick they have become opaque . In…
Milky Way Over Quiver Tree Forest
In front of a famous background of stars and galaxies lies some of Earth's more unusual trees. Known as quiver trees, they are actually succulent aloe plants that can grow to…
Falcon 9 and Milky Way
On May 6, the after midnight launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lit up dark skies over Merritt Island, planet Earth. Its second stage bound for Earth orbit , the rocket's arc…
ISS and Mercury Too
Transits of Mercury are relatively rare. Monday's leisurely 7.5 hour long event was only the 3rd of 14 Mercury transits in the 21st century. If you're willing to travel, transits…
A Transit of Mercury
On May 9 , the diminutive disk of Mercury spent about seven and a half hours crossing in front of the Sun as viewed from the general vicinity of Earth . It was the third of 14…
A Mercury Transit Music Video from SDO
What's that small black dot moving across the Sun? Mercury. Possibly the clearest view of Mercury crossing in front of the Sun earlier this week was from Earth orbit. The Solar…
Saturn and Mars visit Milky Way Star Clouds
Planets, stars, nebulas and a galaxy -- this impressive image has them all. Closest to home are the two planets Mars (right) and Saturn (center), visible as the two bright orange…
Webb Telescope Mirror Rises after Assembly
Move over Hubble -- here comes the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). JWST promises to be the new most powerful telescope in space. In the last month, the 18-segment gold-plated…
Mercury's Transit: An Unusual Spot on the Sun
What's that dot on the Sun? If you look closely, it is almost perfectly round. The dot is the result of an unusual type of solar eclipse that occurred in 2006. Usually it is the…
Three Worlds for TRAPPIST-1
Three new found worlds orbit the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 , a mere 40 light-years away. Their transits were first detected by the Belgian robotic TRA nsiting P lanets and P…
NGC 7023: The Iris Nebula
These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away, in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus . Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to…
The SONG and the Hunter
Near first quarter, the Moon in March lights this snowy, rugged landscape, a view across the top of Tenerife toward La Palma in the Canary Islands Spanish archipelago. The large…
A Mercury Transit Sequence
This coming Monday, Mercury will cross the face of the Sun , as seen from Earth. Called a transit , the last time this happened was in 2006 . Because the plane of Mercury's orbit…
Aurora over Sweden
It was bright and green and stretched across the sky. This striking aurora display was captured last month just outside of stersund , Sweden . Six photographic fields were merged…
Crossing Mars
Where is NASA's rover Curiosity going on Mars? Its geographical goals are on the slopes of Mount Sharp , whose peak is seen in the background on the right. A key scientific goal ,…
Contemplating the Sun
Have you contemplated your home star recently? Featured here, a Sun partially eclipsed on the top left by the Moon is also seen eclipsed by earthlings contemplating the eclipse…
Moon over Makemake
Makemake , second brightest dwarf planet of the Kuiper belt , has a moon. Nicknamed MK2, Makemake's moon reflects sunlight with a charcoal-dark surface, about 1,300 times fainter…
Fermi's Gamma-ray Moon
If you could only see gamma-rays, photons with up to a billion or more times the energy of visible light, the Moon would be brighter than the Sun! That startling notion underlies…
A Dust Angel Nebula
The combined light of stars along the Milky Way are reflected by these cosmic dust clouds that soar some 300 light-years or so above the plane of our galaxy. Dubbed the Angel…
Omega Centauri: The Brightest Globular Star Cluster
This huge ball of stars predates our Sun. Long before humankind evolved, before dinosaurs roamed , and even before our Earth existed, ancient globs of stars condensed and orbited…
NGC 6872: A Stretched Spiral Galaxy
What makes this spiral galaxy so long? Measuring over 700,000 light years across from top to bottom, NGC 6872 , also known as the Condor galaxy, is one of the most elongated…
Supernova Remnant Simeis 147: The Spaghetti Nebula
It's easy to get lost following the intricate strands of the Spaghetti Nebula. A supernova remnant cataloged as Simeis 147 and Sh2-240, the glowing gas filaments cover nearly 3…
Viewing discoveries from 18 May 2016 through 25 April 2016.