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.
Noctilucent Clouds and Comet NEOWISE
These silvery blue waves washing over a tree-lined horizon in the eastern French Alps are noctilucent clouds . From high in planet Earth's mesosphere, they reflect sunlight in…
Mercury's Sodium Tail
What is that fuzzy streak extending from Mercury? Long exposures of our Solar System's innermost planet may reveal something unexpected: a tail. Mercury 's thin atmosphere…
Comet NEOWISE over Lebanon
A comet has suddenly become visible to the unaided eye. Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) was discovered in late March and brightened as it reached its closest approach to the Sun, inside…
M43: Dust, Gas, and Stars in the Orion Nebula
Unspeakable beauty and unimaginable bedlam can be found together in the Orion Nebula Arguably the most famous of all astronomy nebulas, the Great Nebula in Orion is an immense…
Saturn's Northern Hexagon
Why would clouds form a hexagon on Saturn? Nobody is sure. Originally discovered during the Voyager flybys of Saturn in the 1980s, nobody has ever seen anything like it anywhere…
Meeting in the Mesosphere
A sensitive video camera on a summit of the Vosges mountains in France captured these surprising fireworks above a distant horizon on June 26. Generated over intense thunderstorms…
Lynds Dark Nebula 1251
Stars are forming in Lynds Dark Nebula ( LDN ) 1251. About 1,000 light-years away and drifting above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, the dusty molecular cloud is part of a…
The Galaxy, the Planet, and the Apple Tree
The Old Astronomer's Milky Way arcs through this peaceful northern sky. Against faint, diffuse starlight you can follow dark rifts of interstellar dust clouds stretching from the…
Our Rotating Earth
Has your world ever turned upside-down? It would happen every day if you stay fixed to the stars. Most time-lapse videos of the night sky show the stars and sky moving above a…
Bright Planetary Nebula NGC 7027 from Hubble
What created this unusual planetary nebula? NGC 7027 is one of the smallest, brightest, and most unusually shaped planetary nebula s known. Given its expansion rate, NGC 7027…
Dark Sky Reflections
When the lake calmed down, many wonders of the land and sky appeared twice. Perhaps the most dramatic from the dark sky was the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy , visible as a…
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…
APOD is 25 Years Old Today
Welcome to the quadranscentennial year of the Astronomy Picture of the Day. Perhaps a source of consistency for some, APOD is still here. To help celebrate APOD's Silver…
Viewing discoveries from 9 July 2020 through 16 June 2020.