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.
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…
Nacreous Clouds over Sweden
Vivid and lustrous, wafting iridescent waves of color filled this mountain and skyscape near Tanndalen, Sweden on January 3. Known as nacreous clouds or mother-of-pearl clouds,…
Perihelion to Aphelion
Perihelion for 2020 , the point in Earth's elliptical orbit when it is closest to the Sun, occurred on January 5th. The distance from the Sun doesn't determine the seasons,…
Galaxies in the River
Large galaxies grow by eating small ones. Even our own galaxy engages in a sort of galactic cannibalism , absorbing small galaxies that are too close and are captured by the Milky…
IC 405: The Flaming Star Nebula
Rippling dust and gas lanes give the Flaming Star Nebula its name. The orange and purple colors of the nebula are present in different regions and are created by different…
Tumultuous Clouds of Jupiter
Some cloud patterns on Jupiter are quite complex. The featured tumultuous clouds were captured in May by NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft currently orbiting our Solar System 's…
A Starry Night of Iceland
On some nights, the sky is the best show in town. On this night, the sky was not only the best show in town, but a composite image of the sky won an international competition for…
Aurora Slathers Up the Sky
Like salsa verde on your favorite burrito, a green aurora slathers up the sky in this 2017 June 25 snapshot from the International Space Station. About 400 kilometers (250 miles)…
Quadrantids over the Great Wall
Named for a forgotten constellation , the Quadrantid Meteor Shower is an annual event for planet Earth's northern hemisphere skygazers The shower's radiant on the sky lies within…
The Fainting of Betelgeuse
Begirt with many a blazing star , Orion the Hunter is one of the most recognizable constellations. In this night skyscape the Hunter's stars rise in the northern hemisphere's…
Betelgeuse Imagined
Why is Betelgeuse fading? No one knows. Betelgeuse , one of the brightest and most recognized star s in the night sky, is only half as bright as it used to be only five months…
M33: The Triangulum Galaxy
The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy . M33…
Messier 20 and 21
The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. About 5,000 light-years away, the…
Cassini Spacecraft Crosses Saturn's Ring Plane
If this is Saturn, where are the rings? When Saturn's “appendages” disappeared in 1612, Galileo did not understand why. Later that century, it became understood that Saturn 's…
A Distorted Sunrise Eclipse
Yes, but have you ever seen a sunrise like this? Here, after initial cloudiness, the Sun appeared to rise in two pieces and during partial eclipse, causing the photographer to…
A Partial Solar Eclipse Sequence Reflected
What's happened to the Sun? Yesterday, if you were in the right place at the right time, you could see the Sun rise partially eclipsed by the Moon . The unusual sight was captured…
The Northern Winter Hexagon
December's New Moon brought a solar eclipse to some for the holiday season. It also gave beautiful dark night skies to skygazers around the globe, like this moonless northern…
An Annular Solar Eclipse over New Mexico
What is this person doing? In 2012 an annular eclipse of the Sun was visible over a narrow path that crossed the northern Pacific Ocean and several western US states. In an…
A Northern Winter Sky Panorama
What stars shine in Earth's northern hemisphere during winter? The featured image highlights a number of bright stars visible earlier this month. The image is a 360-degree…
Places for OSIRIS-REx to Touch Asteroid Bennu
Where is the best place to collect a surface sample from asteroid Bennu? Launched in 2016, NASA sent the robotic Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification,…
Solstice Illuminated: A Year of Sky
Can you find which day is the winter solstice? Each panel shows one day. With 360 movie panels, the sky over (almost) an entire year is shown in time lapse format as recorded by a…
Solstice to Solstice Solargraph Timelapse
The 2019 December Solstice , on the first day of winter in planet Earth's northern hemisphere and summer in the south, is at 4:19 Universal Time December 22. That's December 21…
Late Afternoon on Mars
Shadows grow long near sunset in this wide panoramic view from the Curiosity rover on Mars . Made with Curiosity's navcam, the scene covers about 200 degrees from north through…
Apollo 17's Moonship
Awkward and angular looking, Apollo 17's lunar module Challenger was designed for flight in the near vacuum of space. Digitally enhanced and reprocessed, this picture taken from…
Viewing discoveries from 11 January 2020 through 19 December 2019.