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.
Cold Weather Delayed over North America
Why is it so warm in northern North America? Usually during this time of year -- mid-November -- temperatures average as much as 30 degrees colder. Europe is not seeing a similar…
Supermoon and Space Station
What are those specks in front of the Moon? They are silhouettes of the International Space Station (ISS). Using careful planning and split-second timing, a meticulous lunar…
Super Moon vs. Micro Moon
What is so super about tomorrow's supermoon? Tomorrow , a full moon will occur that appears slightly larger and brighter than usual. The reason is that the Moon's full y…
NGC 891 vs Abell 347
Galaxies abound in this well-chosen field of view that spans about 1 degree on the sky toward the northern constellation Andromeda. At top right is large spiral galaxy NGC 891,…
NGC 7822 in Cepheus
Hot, young stars and cosmic pillars of gas and dust seem to crowd into NGC 7822. At the edge of a giant molecular cloud toward the northern constellation Cepheus, the glowing star…
Great Rift Near the Center of the Milky Way
Over 100 telescopic image panels in this stunning vertical mosaic span about 50 degrees across the night sky . They follow part of the Great Rift , the dark river of dust and…
M63: The Sunflower Galaxy from Hubble
One of the bright spiral galaxies visible in the north sky is M63, the Sunflower Galaxy. M63, also catalogued as NGC 5055, can be found with a small telescope toward the…
The Cosmic Web of the Tarantula Nebula
It is the largest and most complex star forming region in the entire galactic neighborhood. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud , a small satellite galaxy orbiting our Milky Way…
Inverted City Beneath Clouds
How could that city be upside-down? The city, Chicago , was actually perfectly right-side up. The long shadows it projected onto nearby Lake Michigan near sunset, however, when…
Starburst Cluster in NGC 3603
A mere 20,000 light-years from the Sun lies NGC 3603 , a resident of the nearby Carina spiral arm of our Milky Way Galaxy . NGC 3603 is well known to astronomers as one of the…
ISS Fisheye Fly-Through
Shot in Ultra HD, this stunning video can take you on a tour of the International Space Station. A fisheye lens with sharp focus and extreme depth of field provides an immersive…
Portrait of NGC 281
Look through the cosmic cloud cataloged as NGC 281 and you might miss the stars of open cluster IC 1590 . Still, formed within the nebula that cluster's young, massive stars…
NGC 253: Dusty Island Universe
Shiny NGC 253 is one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, and also one of the dustiest. Some call it the Silver Dollar Galaxy for its appearance in small telescopes, or just…
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,…
Viewing discoveries from 15 November 2016 through 23 October 2016.