Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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I Brought You the Moon
I love you so much that I brought you the Moon. Please take it before this tree becomes more interested. Also the Moon is heavier than I thought. And I foolishly picked it up by…
Twilight in a Western Sky
A slender crescent Moon and inner planets Venus and Mercury never wander far from the Sun in planet Earth's skies. In the fading evening twilight of March 18, they line up near…
NGC 247 and Friends
About 70,000 light-years across, NGC 247 is a spiral galaxy smaller than our Milky Way. Measured to be only 11 million light-years distant it is nearby though. Tilted nearly…
NGC 2023 in the Horsehead's Shadow
Carved by a bright young star in Orion's dusty molecular clouds, NGC 2023 is often overlooked in favor of the nearby dramatic silhouette of the Horsehead Nebula. In its own right…
Blue Moon Tree
Does an alignment like this occur only once in a blue moon? No, although it was during a blue moon that this single-shot image was taken. During a full moon that happened to be…
Mars Between Nebulas
What's that bright red spot between the Lagoon and Trifid Nebulas? Mars. This gorgeous color deep-sky photograph captured the red planet passing between the two notable nebulas --…
The Coma Cluster of Galaxies
Almost every object in the above photograph is a galaxy. The Coma Cluster of Galaxies pictured here is one of the densest clusters known - it contains thousands of galaxies . Each…
Announcing Nova Carinae 2018
How bright will Nova Carinae 2018 become? The new nova was discovered only last week. Although novas occur frequently throughout the universe, this nova, cataloged as ASASSN-18fv…
NGC 602 and Beyond
Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud , a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies 5 million year young star cluster NGC 602 . Surrounded by natal…
Sharpless 249 and the Jellyfish Nebula
Normally faint and elusive, the Jellyfish Nebula is caught in this alluring telescopic image. Centered in the scene it's anchored right and left by two bright stars, Mu and Eta…
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…
Camera Orion
Do you recognize this constellation? Although it is one of the most recognizable star groupings on the sky, Orion's icons don't look quite as colorful to the eye as they do to a…
Chicagohenge: Equinox in an Aligned City
Sometimes, in a way, Chicago is like a modern Stonehenge . The way is east to west, and the time is today. Today, and every equinox , the Sun will set exactly to the west,…
The Nebra Sky Disk
Some consider it the oldest known illustration of the night sky. But what, exactly, does it depict, and why was it made? The Nebra sky disk was found with a metal detector in 1999…
The Crab from Space
The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant ,…
The Seagull and the Duck
Seen as a seagull and a duck, these nebulae are not the only cosmic clouds to evoke images of flight. But both are winging their way across this broad celestial landscape,…
Catalog Entry Number 1
Every journey has a first step and every catalog a first entry . First entries in six well-known deep sky catalogs appear in these panels, from upper left to lower right in…
Night Sky Highlights: March to May
What might you see in the night sky over the next few months? The featured graphic gives a few highlights. Viewed as a clock face centered at the bottom, sky events in March fan…
The Complete Galactic Plane: Up and Down
Is it possible to capture the entire plane of our galaxy in a single image? Yes, but not in one exposure -- and it took some planning to do it in two. The top part of the featured…
Dual Particle Beams in Herbig-Haro 24
This might look like a double-bladed lightsaber, but these two cosmic jets actually beam outward from a newborn star in a galaxy near you . Constructed from Hubble Space Telescope…
Phases of the Moon
Look at the Moon every night and its visible sunlit portion gradually changes. In phases progressing from New Moon to Full Moon to New Moon again, a lunar cycle or lunation is…
Horsehead: A Wider View
Combined image data from the massive, ground-based VISTA telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope was used to create this wide perspective of the interstellar landscape…
Cyclones at Jupiter's North Pole
Juno's Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper data was used to construct this stunning view of cyclones at Jupiter's North Pole . Measuring the thermal emission from Jovian cloud tops,…
Arcs, Jets, and Shocks near NGC 1999
This tantalizing array of nebulas and stars can be found about two degrees south of the famous star-forming Orion Nebula. The region abounds with energetic young stars producing…
Viewing discoveries from 1 April 2018 through 7 March 2018.