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.
M13: The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
In 1716 , English astronomer Edmond Halley noted, “This is but a little Patch, but it shews itself to the naked Eye, when the Sky is serene and the Moon absent.” Of course, M13 is…
Anticrepuscular Rays over Florida
What's happening behind those clouds? Although the scene may appear somehow supernatural , nothing more unusual is occurring than a Sun setting on the other side of the sky.…
M77: Spiral Galaxy with an Active Center
What's happening in the center of nearby spiral galaxy M77? The face-on galaxy lies a mere 47 million light-years away toward the constellation of the Sea Monster ( Cetus ). At…
A Moon Dressed Like Saturn
Why does Saturn appear so big? It doesn't -- what is pictured are foreground clouds on Earth crossing in front of the Moon . The Moon shows a slight crescent phase with most of…
The Snows of Churyumov-Gerasimenko
You couldn't really be caught in this blizzard while standing by a cliff on Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Orbiting the comet -- frequently abbreviated as 67P or CG -- in June of 2016,…
Moonrise and Mountain Shadow
What phase of the Moon is 3.14 radians from the Sun? The Full Moon, of course. Even though the Moon might look full for several days, the Moon is truly at its full phase when it…
Starry Night by Jean-Francois Millet
A dramatic nocturnal landscape from around 1850 , this oil painting is the work of French artist Jean-Francois Millet . In the dark and atmospheric night sky are shooting stars,…
Falcon 9 Boostback
Short star trails appear in this single 84 second long exposure, taken on March 6 from a rotating planet. The remarkable scene also captures the flight of a Falcon 9 rocket and…
An Extreme Black Hole Outburst
Astronomers believe they have now found the most powerful example of a black hole outburst yet seen in our Universe. The composite , false-color featured image is of a cluster of…
Wide Field: Fox Fur, Unicorn, and Christmas Tree
What do the following things have in common: a cone, the fur of a fox, and a Christmas tree? Answer: they all occur in the constellation of the unicorn ( Monoceros ). Pictured as…
Milky Way and Zodiacal Light over Chile
What is the band of light connecting the ground to the Milky Way? Zodiacal light -- a stream of dust that orbits the Sun in the inner Solar System . It is most easily seen just…
Wolf-Rayet Star 124: Stellar Wind Machine
Some stars explode in slow motion. Rare, massive Wolf-Rayet stars are so tumultuous and hot that they are slowly disintegrating right before our telescopes. Glowing gas globs each…
Pic du Midi Panorama
A surreal night skyscape, this panorama stitched from 12 photos looks to the west at an evening winter sky over Pic du Midi Observatory, Pyrenees Mountains, Planet Earth.…
Mars Panorama from Curiosity
The Mars Rover named Curiosity recorded high-resolution, 360 degree views of its location on Mars late last year. The panoramic scene was stitched from over 1,000 images from…
The Light, the Dark, and the Dusty
This colorful skyscape spans about four full moons across nebula rich starfields along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy in the royal northern constellation Cepheus . Near the…
The Slow Dance of Galaxies NGC 5394 and 5395
If you like slow dances , then this may be one for you. A single turn in this dance takes several hundred million years . Two galaxies, NGC 5394 and NGC 5395, slowly whirl about…
Apollo 13 Views of the Moon
What if the only way to get back to Earth was to go around the far side of the Moon? Such was the dilemma of the Apollo 13 Crew in 1970 as they tried to return home in their…
Sharpless-308: The Dolphin Nebula
Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is much larger than the dolphin it appears to be. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,200 light-years away…
A Hole in Mars
What created this unusual hole in Mars? The hole was discovered by chance in 2011 on images of the dusty slopes of Mars' Pavonis Mons volcano taken by the HiRISE instrument aboard…
Julius Caesar and Leap Days
In 46 BC Julius Caesar reformed the calendar system . Based on advice by astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria , the Julian calendar included one leap day every four years to account…
South Celestial Rocket Launch
At sunset on December 6 a Rocket Lab Electron rocket was launched from a rotating planet. With multiple small satellites on board it departed on a mission to low Earth orbit…
Two Hemisphere Night Sky
The Sun is hidden by a horizon that runs across the middle in this two hemisphere view of Earth's night sky . The digitally stitched mosaics were recorded from corresponding…
NGTS-10b: Discovery of a Doomed Planet
This hot jupiter is doomed. Hot jupiters are giant planets like Jupiter that orbit much closer to their parent stars than Mercury does to our Sun . But some hot jupiters are more…
Jupiter's Magnetic Field from Juno
How similar is Jupiter's magnetic field to Earth's? NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft has found that Jupiter's magnetic field is surprisingly complex, so that the Jovian world does…
Viewing discoveries from 19 March 2020 through 25 February 2020.