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.
Pluto's Sputnik Planum
Is there an ocean below Sputnik Planum on Pluto? The unusually smooth 1000-km wide golden expanse, visible in the featured image from New Horizons , appears segmented into…
Nova over Thailand
A nova in Sagittarius is bright enough to see with binoculars. Discovered last month by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN), the stellar explosion even…
NGC 4414: A Flocculent Spiral Galaxy
How much mass do flocculent spirals hide? The featured true color image of flocculent spiral galaxy NGC 4414 was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope to help answer this…
IC 5070: A Dusty Pelican in the Swan
The recognizable profile of the Pelican Nebula soars nearly 2,000 light-years away in the high flying constellation Cygnus, the Swan . Also known as IC 5070, this interstellar…
Philadelphia Perigee Full Moon
A supermoon sets over the metropolis of Philadelphia in this twilight snapshot captured on November 14 at 6:21am Eastern Standard Time. Within hours of the Moon's exact full…
Soyuz vs Supermoon
Faster than a speeding bullet , more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, this Soyuz rocket stands on the launch pad at Baikonur…
The Heart and Soul Nebulas
Is the heart and soul of our Galaxy located in Cassiopeia ? Possibly not, but that is where two bright emission nebulas nicknamed Heart and Soul can be found. The Heart Nebula ,…
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…
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…
Viewing discoveries from 22 November 2016 through 29 October 2016.