Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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M27: The Dumbbell Nebula
The first hint of what will become of our Sun was discovered inadvertently in 1764 . At that time, Charles Messier was compiling a list of diffuse objects not to be confused with…
Arp 299: Black Holes in Colliding Galaxies
Is only one black hole spewing high energy radiation -- or two? To help find out , astronomers trained NASA 's Earth-orbiting NuSTAR and Chandra telescopes on Arp 299 , the…
Ghost Aurora over Canada
What does this aurora look like to you? While braving the cold to watch the skies above northern Canada early one morning in 2013, a most unusual aurora appeared. The aurora…
Halloween and the Ghost Head Nebula
Halloween's origin is ancient and astronomical. Since the fifth century BC, Halloween has been celebrated as a cross-quarter day , a day halfway between an equinox (equal day /…
Moonset at Whitby Abbey
October's Hunters Moon shines near the horizon, setting beyond the arches of Whitby Abbey in this eerie night scene. The moonlight partly illuminates the ruined Benedictine…
Haunting the Cepheus Flare
Spooky shapes seem to haunt this jeweled expanse, drifting through the night in the royal constellation Cepheus . Of course, the shapes are cosmic dust clouds faintly visible in…
A Giant Squid in the Flying Bat
Very faint but also very large on planet Earth's sky, a giant Squid Nebula cataloged as Ou4, and Sh2-129 also known as the Flying Bat Nebula, are both caught in this cosmic scene…
Propeller Shadows on Saturn's Rings
What created these unusually long shadows on Saturn's rings? The dark shadows -- visible near the middle of the image -- extend opposite the Sun and, given their length, stem from…
Clouds Near Jupiter's South Pole from Juno
What's happening near the south pole of Jupiter? Recent images sent back by NASA 's robotic Juno spacecraft are showing an interesting conglomeration of swirling clouds and what…
HI4PI: The Hydrogen Sky
Where are the Milky Way's gas clouds and where are they going? To help answer this question, a new highest-resolution map of the sky in the universe's most abundant gas --…
Eagle Aurora over Norway
What's that in the sky? An aurora. A large coronal mass ejection occurred on our Sun five days before this 2012 image was taken, throwing a cloud of fast moving electrons,…
Cerro Tololo Trails
Early one moonlit evening car lights left a wandering trail along the road to the Chilean Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory . Setting stars left the wandering trails in the…
Full Moon in Mountain Shadow
On October 15, standing near the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea and looking away from a gorgeous sunset produced this magnificent snapshot of a Full Moon rising within the volcanic…
The Tulip in the Swan
Framing a bright emission region this telescopic view looks out along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the nebula rich constellation Cygnus the Swan . Popularly called the…
M45: The Pleiades Star Cluster
Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as dusty as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars…
The Antlia Cluster of Galaxies
Galaxies dot the sky in this impressively wide and deep image of the Antlia Cluster. The third closest cluster of galaxies to Earth after Virgo and Fornax , the Antlia cluster is…
An Atlas V Rocket Launches OSIRIS-REx
Have you ever seen a rocket launched into the Solar System? Last month a large Atlas V rocket blasted off from Launch Complex 41 in Florida carrying the OSIRIX-REx spacecraft.…
Cylindrical Mountains on Venus
What could cause a huge cylindrical mountain to rise from the surface of Venus? Such features that occur on Venus are known as coronas . Pictured here in the foreground is…
Gemini Observatory North
It does look like a flying saucer, but this technologically advanced structure is not here to deliver the wise extraterrestrial from the scifi classic movie The Day the Earth…
Herschel's Orion
This dramatic image peers within M42, the Orion Nebula, the closest large star-forming region. Using data at infrared wavelengths from the Herschel Space Observatory , the…
Galaxies from the Altiplano
The central bulge of our Milky Way Galaxy rises over the northern Chilean Atacama altiplano in this postcard from planet Earth. At an altitude of 4500 meters, the strange beauty…
Penumbral Lunar Eclipse
Does this Moon look a little different to you? Although shown in spectacular detail, the full face of Earth's most familiar satellite appears slightly darker than usual, in…
The Cygnus Wall of Star Formation
Sometimes, stars form in walls -- bright walls of interstellar gas. In this vivid skyscape , stars are forming in the W-shaped ridge of emission known as the Cygnus Wall. Part of…
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The Winds of Earth
Which way is the wind blowing? The featured map can tell you this and much more, no matter your location on planet Earth. The dynamic map displays supercomputer forecasts drawn…
Viewing discoveries from 2 November 2016 through 10 October 2016.