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.
Ghost Aurora over Canada
What does this aurora look like to you? While braving the cold to watch the skies above northern Canada early one morning in 2013, a most unusual aurora appeared. The aurora…
Gravity's Grin
Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, published over 100 years ago, predicted the phenomenon of gravitational lensing. And that's what gives these distant galaxies such…
The Ghosts of Cassiopeia
These bright rims and flowing shapes look ghostly on a cosmic scale. A telescopic view toward the constellation Cassiopeia , the colorful skyscape features swept-back,…
Dark 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…
Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh
The painting Starry Night is one of the most famous icons of the night sky ever created. The scene was painted by Vincent van Gogh in southern France in 1889. The swirling style…
Night Sky Reflections from the World's Largest Mirror
What's being reflected in the world's largest mirror? Stars, galaxies, and a planet. Many of these stars are confined to the grand arch that runs across the image, an arch that is…
A Mercury Transit Music Video from SDO
What's that small black dot moving across the Sun? Mercury. Possibly the clearest view of Mercury crossing in front of the Sun in 2016 May was from Earth orbit. The Solar Dynamics…
Pluto at Night
The night side of Pluto spans this shadowy scene , a stunning spacebased view with the Sun 4.9 billion kilometers (almost 4.5 light-hours) behind the dim and distant world. It was…
All Female Spacewalk Repairs Space Station
The failed unit was beyond the reach of the robotic Canadarm2 . Therefore, this repair of the International Space Station would require humans. The humans on duty were NASA's…
Interstellar Interloper 2I/Borisov
After the 2017 detecton of 1I/'Oumuamua, comet 2I/Borisov has become the second recognized interstellar interloper. Like 'Oumuamua, Borisov's measured hyperbolic trajectory and…
Moons of Saturn
On July 29, 2011 the Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera took this snapshot and captured 5 of Saturn's moons , from just above the ringplane. Left to right are small moons…
BHB2007: A Baby Binary Star in Formation
How do binary stars form? To help find out, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array ( ALMA ) recently captured one of the highest resolution images yet taken of a binary star system in…
The Galaxy Above
Have you contemplated your home galaxy lately? If your sky looked like this, perhaps you'd contemplate it more often! The featured picture is actually a composite of two images…
Andromeda before Photoshop
What does the Andromeda galaxy really look like? The featured image shows how our Milky Way Galaxy 's closest major galactic neighbor really appears in a long exposure through…
A Stellar Jewel Box: Open Cluster NGC 290
Jewels don't shine this bright -- only stars do. Like gems in a jewel box, though, the stars of open cluster NGC 290 glitter in a beautiful display of brightness and color. The…
Interplanetary Earth
In an interplanetary first, on July 19, 2013 Earth was photographed on the same day from two other worlds of the Solar System, innermost planet Mercury and ringed gas giant…
Planet Earth at Blue Hour
Nature photographers and other fans of planet Earth always look forward to the blue hour . That's the transition in twilight , just before sunrise or after sunset, when the Sun is…
Mid-Air Meteor and Milky Way
On September 24, a late evening commercial flight from Singapore to Australia offered stratospheric views of the southern hemisphere's night sky, if you chose a window seat . In…
NGC 7714: Starburst after Galaxy Collision
Is this galaxy jumping through a giant ring of stars ? Probably not. Although the precise dynamics behind the featured image is yet unclear, what is clear is that the pictured…
Sprite Lightning in HD
This phenomenon occurs in the sky over our heads, not the sea. It is a type of lightning known as red sprite, and rarely has it ever been photographed in this detail. Even though…
Io Eclipse Shadow on Jupiter from Juno
What's that dark spot on Jupiter? It's the shadow of Jupiter 's most volcanic moon Io . Since Jupiter shines predominantly by reflected sunlight, anything that blocks that light…
The Horsehead Nebula
The Horsehead Nebula is one of the most famous nebulae on the sky. It is visible as the dark indentation to the red emission nebula in the center of the above photograph. The…
Jupiter and the Moons
After sunset on October 3, some of the Solar System's largest moons stood low along the western horizon with the largest planet . Just after nightfall, a pairing of the Moon…
InSight on a Cloudy Day
Clouds drift through the sky as the light fades near sunset in this three frame animated gif. The scene was captured on sol 145 beginning around 6:30pm local time by a camera on…
Viewing discoveries from 27 October 2019 through 4 October 2019.