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.
Annular Eclipse After Sunrise
From northern Patagonia , morning skies were clear and blue on Sunday, February 26. This sweeping composite scene, overlooking Hermoso Valle, Facundo, Chubut, Argentina, follows…
A Solar Eclipse with a Beaded Ring of Fire
What kind of eclipse is this? On Sunday , visible in parts of Earth's southern hemisphere, the Moon blocked part of the Sun during a partial solar eclipse . In some locations,…
A White Oval Cloud on Jupiter from Juno
This storm cloud on Jupiter is almost as large as the Earth. Known as a white oval , the swirling cloud is a high pressure system equivalent to an Earthly anticyclone . The cloud…
Four Quasar Images Surround a Galaxy Lens
An odd thing about the group of lights near the center is that four of them are the same distant quasar . This is because the foreground galaxy -- in the center of the quasar…
A Supercell Thunderstorm Cloud Over Montana
Is that a spaceship or a cloud? Although it may seem like an alien mothership , it's actually a impressive thunderstorm cloud called a supercell . Such colossal storm systems…
All Planets Panorama
For 360 degrees , a view along the plane of the ecliptic is captured in this remarkable panorama, with seven planets in a starry sky. The mosaic was constructed using images taken…
NGC 3621: Far Beyond the Local Group
Far beyond the local group of galaxies lies NGC 3621 , some 22 million light-years away. Found in the multi-headed southern constellation Hydra , the winding spiral arms of this…
Seven Worlds for TRAPPIST-1
Seven worlds orbit the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, a mere 40 light-years away. In May 2016 astronomers using the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope…
Daphnis and the Rings of Saturn
What's happening to the rings of Saturn? Nothing much, just a little moon making waves. The moon is 8-kilometer Daphnis and it is making waves in the Keeler Gap of Saturn 's rings…
An Active Night over the Magellan Telescopes
The night sky is always changing. Featured here are changes that occurred over a six hour period in late 2014 June behind the dual 6.5-meter Magellan Telescopes at Las Campanas…
Almost Three Tails for Comet Encke
How can a comet have three tails? Normally, a comet has two tails : an ion tail of charged particles emitted by the comet and pushed out by the wind from the Sun, and a dust tail…
Black Sun and Inverted Starfield
Does this strange dark ball look somehow familiar? If so, that might be because it is our Sun. In the featured image from 2012, a detailed solar view was captured originally in a…
Penumbral Eclipse Rising
As seen from Cocoa Beach Pier, Florida, planet Earth, the Moon rose at sunset on February 10 while gliding through Earth's faint outer shadow. In progress was the first eclipse of…
Polar Ring Galaxy NGC 660
NGC 660 is featured in this cosmic snapshot . Over 40 million light-years away and swimming within the boundaries of the constellation Pisces , NGC 660's peculiar appearance marks…
The Tulip and Cygnus X-1
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 Calabash Nebula from Hubble
Fast expanding gas clouds mark the end for a central star in the Calabash Nebula. The once-normal star has run out of nuclear fuel , causing the central regions to contract into a…
The Rosette Nebula
Would the Rosette Nebula by any other name look as sweet? The bland New General Catalog designation of NGC 2237 doesn't appear to diminish the appearance of this flowery emission…
Cloud Swirls around Southern Jupiter from Juno
Juno just completed its fourth pass near Jupiter. Launched from Earth in 2011 and arriving at Jupiter just last July, robotic Juno concluded its latest elliptical orbit around our…
Comet 45P Passes Near the Earth
A large snowball has just passed the Earth. Known as Comet 45P/HondaMrkosPajdukov“ , or 45P for short, the comet came 10 times closer to Earth yesterday than the Earth ever gets…
Solar System Portrait
On Valentine's Day in 1990, cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back one last time to make this first ever Solar System family portrait . The…
Melotte 15 in the Heart
Cosmic clouds form fantastic shapes in the central regions of emission nebula IC 1805. The clouds are sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from massive hot stars in the…
Crescent Enceladus
Peering from the shadows, the Saturn-facing hemisphere of tantalizing inner moon Enceladus poses in this Cassini spacecraft image. North is up in the dramatic scene captured last…
The Butterfly Nebula from Hubble
The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often named for flowers or insects . Though its wingspan covers over 3 light-years, NGC 6302 is no exception. With…
NGC 6357: The Lobster Nebula
Why is the Lobster Nebula forming some of the most massive stars known? No one is yet sure . Near the more obvious Cat's Paw nebula on the upper right, the Lobster Nebula, on the…
Viewing discoveries from 2 March 2017 through 7 February 2017.