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.
Ultraviolet Earth from an Observatory on the Moon
Which planet is this? Earth . The featured false color picture shows how the Earth shines in ultraviolet (UV) light. The image is historic because it was taken from the surface of…
Airglow Borealis
The best known asterism in northern skies hangs over the Canadian Rockies in this mountain and night skyscape taken last week from Banff National Park. But most remarkable is the…
IC 59 and IC 63 in Cassiopeia
These bright rims and flowing shapes look ghostly on a cosmic scale. A telescopic view toward the constellation Cassiopeia , the colorful (zoomable) skyscape features the…
Barnard 150: Seahorse in Cepheus
Light-years across, this suggestive shape known as the Seahorse Nebula appears in silhouette against a rich, luminous background of stars. Seen toward the royal northern…
Light Pillars over Whitefish Bay
What's happening in the sky? Unusual lights appeared last week to hover above Whitefish Bay on the eastern edge of Lake Superior between the USA and Canada . Unsure of the cause,…
Hyperion: Largest Known Galaxy Proto-Supercluster
How did galaxies form in the early universe? To help find out, astronomers surveyed a patch of dark night sky with the Very Large Telescope array in Chile to find and count…
Apollo 12 Visits Surveyor 3
Apollo 12 was the second mission to land humans on the Moon . The landing site was picked to be near the location of Surveyor 3, a robot spacecraft that had landed on the Moon…
Meteor, Comet, and Seagull (Nebula)
A meteor, a comet, and a photogenic nebula have all been captured in this single image. The closest and most fleeting is the streaking meteor on the upper right -- it was visible…
Halo of the Cat's Eye
Not a Falcon 9 rocket launch after sunset, the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its haunting symmetries are seen in the very…
Summer to Winter Milky Way
Taken near local midnight, this autumn night's panorama follows the arch of the Milky Way across the northern horizon from the High Fens, Eifel Nature Park at the border of…
Cherenkov Telescope at Sunset
On October 10, a new telescope reflected the light of the setting Sun. With dark horizon above and sunset colors below, its segmented mirror inverts an image of the beautiful…
M15: Dense Globular Star Cluster
Messier 15 is an immense swarm of over 100,000 stars. A 13 billion year old relic of the early formative years of our galaxy it's one of about 170 globular star clusters that…
Jupiter in Ultraviolet from Hubble
Jupiter looks a bit different in ultraviolet light. To better interpret Jupiter 's cloud motions and to help NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft understand the planetary context of the…
M16: In and Around the Eagle Nebula
From afar, the whole thing looks like an Eagle . A closer look at the Eagle Nebula , however, shows the bright region is actually a window into the center of a larger dark shell…
Orion in Red and Blue
When did Orion become so flashy? This colorful rendition of part of the constellation of Orion comes from red light emitted by hydrogen and sulfur (SII), and blue-green light…
Skygazers on the Beach
Kona, a young boxer, is a dog who loves splashing in the waves along Solana Beach near San Diego, planet Earth . But he paused here, at least briefly, during an early evening romp…
The Falcon 9 Nebula
Not the Hubble Space Telescope's latest view of a distant planetary nebula, this illuminated cloud of gas and dust dazzled even casual U.S. west coast skygazers on October 7.…
West Coast Launch and Landing
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch dazzled viewers along the U.S. west coast after sunset on October 7. Rising from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, planet Earth, the Falcon…
NGC 1672: Barred Spiral Galaxy from Hubble
Many spiral galaxies have bars across their centers. Even our own Milky Way Galaxy is thought to have a modest central bar . Prominently barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672, featured…
Comet 21P Between Rosette and Cone Nebulas
Small bits of this greenish-gray comet are expected to streak across Earth's atmosphere tonight. Specifically, debris from the eroding nucleus of Comet 21P / Giacobini-Zinner ,…
The Scale of the Universe - Interactive
What does the universe look like on small scales? On large scales? Humanity is discovering that the universe is a very different place on every proportion that has been explored.…
Aurora: The Frog's View
What does an aurora look like to a frog? “Awesome!” is the likely answer , suggested by this imaginative snapshot taken on October 3rd from Kiruna, Sweden. Frequented by…
The Last Days of Venus as the Evening Star
That's not a young crescent Moon poised above the hills along the western horizon at sunset. It's Venus in a crescent phase . About 54 million kilometers away and less than 20…
Opportunity After the Storm
On Mars dust storms can't actually blow spacecraft over, but they can blot out the Sun. Over three months ago a planet-wide dust storm caused a severe lack of sunlight for the…
Viewing discoveries from 28 October 2018 through 4 October 2018.