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.
Meteor before Galaxy
What's that green streak in front of the Andromeda galaxy? A meteor. While photographing the Andromeda galaxy in 2016, near the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower , a sand-sized…
Moon, Mars, and Milky Way
Just two weeks ago , dark skies over the desert in northern Iran held this alluring celestial vista. The dramatic digital mosaic finds the Moon and Mars alongside the Milky Way's…
Spiral Galaxy NGC 6744
Beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is nearly 175,000 light-years across, larger than our own Milky Way . It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern constellation…
Red Planet, Red Moon, and Mars
Mars is also known as The Red Planet , often seen with a reddish tinge in dark night skies. Mars shines brightly at the upper left of this gorgeous morning twilight view from…
Preview unavailable
Open the archive entry to view the source media.
Animation: Perseid Meteor Shower
Where do Perseid meteors come from? Mostly small bits of stony grit, Perseid meteoroids were once expelled from Comet Swift-Tuttle and continue to follow this comet's orbit as…
Eclipsed Moon and Mars over Mountains
There is something unusual about this astronomically-oriented photograph. It's not obvious -- it was discovered only during post-processing. It is not the Moon , although…
Live: Cosmic Rays from Minnesota
Cosmic rays from outer space go through your body every second. Typically, they do you no harm. The featured image shows some of these fast moving particles as streaks going…
Trapezium: At the Heart of Orion
Near the center of this sharp cosmic portrait , at the heart of the Orion Nebula , are four hot, massive stars known as the Trapezium . Gathered within a region about 1.5…
Central Cygnus Skyscape
Supergiant star Gamma Cygni lies at the center of the Northern Cross , famous asterism in the constellation Cygnus the Swan. Known by its proper name, Sadr , the bright star also…
Central Lunar Eclipse
Reddened by scattered sunlight, the Moon in the center is passing through the center of Earth's dark umbral shadow in this July 27 lunar eclipse sequence . Left to right the three…
Eclipse over the Gulf of Poets
The total phase of the July 27 lunar eclipse lasted for an impressive 103 minutes. That makes it the longest total lunar eclipse of the 21st century . The Moon passed through the…
The Iris Nebula in a Field of Dust
What blue flower grows in this field of dark interstellar dust? The Iris Nebula . The striking blue color of the Iris Nebula is created by light from the bright star SAO 19158…
Layers of the South Pole of Mars
What lies beneath the layered south pole of Mars? A recent measurement with ground-penetrating radar from ESA's Mars Express satellite has detected a bright reflection layer…
Lunar Eclipse over Rio
Moonrise doesn't usually look this interesting. For one thing, the full moon is not usually this dark -- but last Friday the moon rose here as it simultaneously passed through the…
Journey to the Center of the Galaxy
What wonders lie at the center of our Galaxy? In Jules Verne's science fiction classic A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Professor Liedenbrock and his fellow explorers…
One Night, One Telescope, One Camera
Taken on the same night, from the same place, with the same telescope and camera, these postcards from our Solar System are shown at the same scale to provide an interesting…
Mars Opposition
Look opposite the Sun in the sky tonight and you'll see Mars at its brightest . Also within days of its closest approach Mars rises at sunset, near its brightest and best for…
Barnard 228: The Dark Wolf Nebula in Lupus
These dark markings on the sky can just be found in silhouette against a rich, luminous background of stars. Seen toward the southern constellation of Lupus the Wolf, the dusty,…
The Edge-On Spindle Galaxy
What kind of celestial object is this? A relatively normal galaxy -- but seen from its edge. Many disk galaxies are actually just as thin as NGC 5866, pictured here , but are not…
Clouds of Earth and Sky
If you go high enough, you may find yourself on a picturesque perch between the water clouds of the Earth and the star clouds of the Milky Way. Such was the case last month for…
Fermi Science Finals
The Fermi Science Playoffs celebrate 10 years of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope's exploration of the high-energy universe . Surviving all early rounds of voting, these two…
Planck Maps the Microwave Background
What is our universe made of? To help find out, ESA launched the Planck satellite from 2009 to 2013 to map, in unprecedented detail, slight temperature differences on the oldest…
Apollo 11 Landing Site Panorama
Have you seen a panorama from another world lately? Assembled from high-resolution scans of the original film frames, this one sweeps across the magnificent desolation of the…
The Teapot and the Milky Way
The recognizable stars of the Teapot asterism in the constellation Sagittarius posed with the Milky Way over Death Valley, planet Earth on this quiet, dark night . The surreal…
Viewing discoveries from 12 August 2018 through 20 July 2018.