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.
Europa and Jupiter from Voyager 1
What are those spots on Jupiter? Largest and furthest, just right of center, is the Great Red Spot -- a huge storm system that has been raging on Jupiter possibly since Giovanni…
Eclipse under the ISS
The dark shadow of the New Moon reached out and touched planet Earth on June 21. A high definition camera outside the International Space Station captured its passing in this…
Eclipse under the Bamboo
Want to watch a solar eclipse safely? Try looking down instead of up, though you might discover you have a plethora of images to choose from. For example, during the June 21st…
Eclipse Street, Hong Kong
On June 21 an annular solar eclipse came soon after the solstice and our fair planet's northernmost sunset for 2020. At maximum eclipse, the New Moon in silhouette created a ring…
Inverted City Beneath Clouds
How could that city be upside-down? The city, Chicago , was actually perfectly right-side up. The long shadows it projected onto nearby Lake Michigan near sunset, however, when…
The X-Ray Sky from eROSITA
What if you could see X-rays? The night sky would seem a strange and unfamiliar place. X-rays are about 1,000 times more energetic than visible light photons and are produced by…
Moon Mountains Magnified during Ring of Fire Eclipse
What are those dark streaks in this composite image of yesterday's solar eclipse? They are reversed shadows of mountains at the edge of the Moon. The center image, captured from…
Moon Occults Venus
It may look like Earthrise , but it's actually Venus-set. Just after sunrise two days ago, both the Moon and Venus also rose . But then the Moon overtook Venus . In the featured…
Northern Summer on Titan
Today's solstice brings summer to planet Earth's northern hemisphere. But the northern summer solstice arrived for ringed planet Saturn over three years ago on May 24, 2017.…
The Veins of Heaven
Transfusing sunlight through a darkened sky, this beautiful display of noctilucent clouds was captured earlier this week, reflected in calm waters from Nykobing Mors, Denmark.…
The Tadpoles of IC 410
This telescopic close-up shows off the central regions of otherwise faint emission nebula IC 410, captured under backyard suburban skies with narrowband filters . It also features…
Magnetic Streamlines of the Milky Way
What role do magnetic fields play in interstellar physics? Analyses of observations by ESA's Planck satellite of emission by small magnetically-aligned dust grains reveal…
SpaceX Demo-2 Launch
Clouds are white but the sky is dark in this snapshot of Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The dramatic daytime sky is partly due to the black and white photo…
NGC 2359: Thor's Helmet
NGC 2359 is a helmet-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages popularly called Thor's Helmet. Heroically sized even for a Norse god , Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years…
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300
Big, beautiful, barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300 lies some 70 million light-years away on the banks of the constellation Eridanus . This Hubble Space Telescope composite view of the…
Orion over Argentine Mountains
Do you recognize the constellation of Orion? It may be harder than usual in today's featured image because the camera has zoomed in on the center, and the exposure is long enough…
Atmospheric Ring of Venus
Why is Venus surrounded by a bright ring? Sometimes called a ring of fire , this rare ring is caused by the Sun's light being visible all around an object. Usually seen around the…
Halo of the Cat's Eye
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 central region of this stunning false-color…
Comet PanSTARRs and the Galaxies
Comet PanSTARRs, C/2017 T2 , shared this stunning telescopic field of view with galaxies M81 and M82 on May 22/23. Of course, the galaxies were some 12 million light-years distant…
Dragon over Central Park
Still bathed in sunlight the International Space Station (ISS) arced through this Manhattan evening sky on May 30. Moving left to right, its bright trail was captured in this…
Portrait of NGC 3628
Sharp telescopic views of NGC 3628 show a puffy galactic disk divided by dark dust lanes. Of course, this deep portrait of the magnificent, edge-on spiral galaxy puts some…
Novel Coronavirus Attacks Humanity
Humanity is under attack. The attack is not from large tentacle-flailing aliens , but from invaders so small they can barely be seen, and so strange they are not even clearly…
The Lively Center of the Lagoon Nebula
The center of the Lagoon Nebula is a whirlwind of spectacular star formation. Visible near the image center, at least two long funnel-shaped clouds, each roughly half a light-year…
Aurora over Sweden
It was bright and green and stretched across the sky. This striking aurora display was captured in 2016 just outside of Östersund , Sweden . Six photographic fields were merged to…
Viewing discoveries from 28 June 2020 through 31 May 2020.