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.
Robotic Dragonfly Selected to Fly Across Titan
If you could fly across Titan, what would you see? To find out and to better explore this exotic moon of Saturn, NASA recently green-lighted Dragonfly, a mission to Titan with…
NGC 1566: The Spanish Dancer Spiral Galaxy
If not perfect, then this spiral galaxy is at least one of the most photogenic. An island universe containing billions of stars and situated about 40 million light-years away…
The Big Corona
Most photographs don't adequately portray the magnificence of the Sun 's corona. Seeing the corona first-hand during a total solar eclipse is unparalleled . The human eye can…
Virtual Flight over Asteroid Vesta
What would it be like to fly over the asteroid Vesta? Animators from the German Aerospace Center took actual images and height data from NASA's Dawn mission when it visited…
M83: The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy
Big, bright, and beautiful, spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra . Prominent spiral arms…
A Solstice Night in Paris
The night of June 21 was the shortest night for planet Earth's northern latitudes, so at latitude 48.9 degrees north, Paris was no exception. Still, the City of Light had an…
The Longer Days
This persistent six month long exposure compresses the time from solstice to solstice (December 21, 2018 to June 16, 2019) into a single point of view. Dubbed a solargraph , the…
Noctilucent Clouds, Reflections, and Silhouettes
Sometimes it's night on the ground but day in the air. As the Earth rotates to eclipse the Sun, sunset rises up from the ground. Therefore, at sunset on the ground, sunlight still…
25 Brightest Stars in the Night Sky
Do you know the names of some of the brightest stars? It's likely that you do, even though some bright stars have names so old they date back to near the beginning of written…
Anticrepuscular Rays Converge Opposite the Sun
Is there ever anything interesting to see in the direction opposite the Sun? Sometimes there is. Notable items include your own shadow , a shadow of the Moon during a total solar…
Carina Nebula Panorama from Hubble
How do violent stars affect their surroundings? To help find out, astronomers created a 48-frame high-resolution, controlled-color panorama of the center of the Carina Nebula ,…
Ares 3 Landing Site: The Martian Revisited
This close-up from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera shows weathered craters and windblown deposits in southern Acidalia Planitia . A striking shade of blue in…
Sunset Analemma
Today, the solstice is at 15:54 Universal Time , the Sun reaching the northernmost declination in its yearly journey through planet Earth's sky . A June solstice marks the…
A View Toward M106
Big, bright, beautiful spiral, Messier 106 dominates this cosmic vista. The nearly two degree wide telescopic field of view looks toward the well-trained constellation Canes…
Our Galaxy's Magnetic Center
What's the magnetic field like in the center of our Milky Way Galaxy? To help find out, NASA's SOFIA -- an observatory flying in a modified 747 -- imaged the central region with…
Strawberry Moon over the Temple of Poseidon
Did you see the full moon last night? If not, tonight's nearly full moon should be almost as good. Because full moon s are opposite the Sun , they are visible in the sky when the…
Milky Way over Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent
To see the feathered serpent descend the Mayan pyramid requires exquisite timing. You must visit El Castillo -- in Mexico 's Yucatn Peninsula -- near an equinox . Then, during the…
Unusual Mountain Ahuna Mons on Asteroid Ceres
What created this unusual mountain? There is a new theory. Ahuna Mons is the largest mountain on the largest known asteroid in our Solar System , Ceres , which orbits our Sun in…
Stereo Helene
Get out your red/blue glasses and float next to Helene, small, icy moon of Saturn. Appropriately named, Helene is one of four known Trojan moons, so called because it orbits at a…
NGC 4676: The Mighty Mice
These two mighty galaxies are pulling each other apart. Known as The Mice because they have such long tails, each large spiral galaxy has actually passed through the other. Their…
The Colors and Magnitudes of M13
M13 is modestly recognized as the Great Globular Star Cluster in Hercules. A ball of stars numbering in the hundreds of thousands crowded into a region 150 light years across, it…
Spiral Galaxy M96 from Hubble
Dust lanes seem to swirl around the core of Messier 96 in this colorful, detailed portrait of the center of a beautiful island universe . Of course M96 is a spiral galaxy , and…
The Cave Nebula in Infrared from Spitzer
What's happening in and around the Cave Nebula? To help find out, NASA's orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope looked into this optically-dark star-forming region in four colors of…
Jupiter Abyss
What's that black spot on Jupiter? No one is sure. During the latest pass of NASA's Juno around Jupiter , the robotic spacecraft imaged an usually dark cloud feature informally…
Viewing discoveries from 3 July 2019 through 10 June 2019.