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 7331 Close Up
Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 7331 is often touted as an analog to our own Milky Way . About 50 million light-years distant in the northern constellation Pegasus , NGC 7331 was…
The Horsehead Nebula in Infrared from Hubble
While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the…
Star Forming Region NGC 3582 without Stars
What's happening in the Statue of Liberty nebula? Bright stars and interesting molecules are forming and being liberated . The complex nebula resides in the star forming region…
Star Trails and Lightning over the Pyrenees
The beauty in this image comes in layers. On the bottom layer is the picturesque village of Manlleu in Barcelona , Spain . The six-minute exposure makes car lights into streaks.…
Analemma over the Callanish Stones
If you went outside at the same time every day and took a picture that included the Sun, how would the Sun's position change? A more visual answer to that question is an analemma…
Perseverance in Jezero Crater's Delta
The Perseverance rover's Mastcam-Z captured images to create this mosaic on August 4, 2022 . The car-sized robot was continuing its exploration of the fan-shaped delta of a river…
The Tarantula Zone
The Tarantula Nebula , also known as 30 Doradus, is more than a thousand light-years in diameter, a giant star forming region within nearby satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic…
Harvest Moon over Sicily
For northern hemisphere dwellers, September's Full Moon was the Harvest Moon. Reflecting warm hues at sunset it rises over the historic town of Castiglione di Sicilia in this…
Waves of the Great Lacerta Nebula
It is one of the largest nebulas on the sky -- why isn't it better known? Roughly the same angular size as the Andromeda Galaxy , the Great Lacerta Nebula can be found toward the…
A Long Snaking Filament on the Sun
Earlier this month, the Sun exhibited one of the longer filaments on record. Visible as the bright curving streak around the image center, the snaking filament's full extent was…
Red Sprite Lightning over the Czech Republic
What are those red filaments in the sky? They are a rarely seen form of lightning confirmed only about 35 years ago: red sprites . Research has shown that following a powerful…
Galaxy by the Lake
This 180 degree panoramic night skyscape captures our Milky Way Galaxy as it arcs above the horizon on a winter's night in August. Near midnight, the galactic center is close to…
Interstellar Voyager
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched in 1977 on a grand tour of the outer planets of the Solar System . They have become the longest operating and most distant spacecraft from…
North America and the Pelican
Fans of our fair planet might recognize the outlines of these cosmic clouds . On the left, bright emission outlined by dark, obscuring dust lanes seems to trace a continental…
Tarantula Stars R136 from Webb
Near the center of a nearby star-forming region lies a massive cluster containing some of the largest and hottest stars known. Collectively known as star cluster NGC 2070 , these…
An Iridescent Pileus Cloud over China
Yes, but how many dark clouds have a multicolored lining? Pictured, behind this darker cloud, is a pileus iridescent cloud , a group of water droplets that have a uniformly…
Carina Cliffs from the Webb Space Telescope
Stars created these cliffs. Specifically, the destructive winds and energetic light from the stars in the open cluster NGC 3324 eroded away part of a mountain of dark interstellar…
Sea and Sky Glows over the Oregon Coast
Every step caused the sand to light up blue. That glow was bioluminescence -- a blue radiance that also lights the surf in this surreal scene captured in mid-2018 at Meyer's Creek…
Sun and Moon and ISS
On August 25 Sun and Moon could both be seen in planet Earth's daytime skies. And so could the International Space Station . The ISS crossed the disk of the waning crescent Moon…
M51: The Whirlpool Galaxy
Find the Big Dipper and follow the handle away from the dipper's bowl until you get to the last bright star. Then, just slide your telescope a little south and west and you'll…
The Tulip and Cygnus X-1
Framing a bright emission region, this telescopic view looks out along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the nebula rich constellation Cygnus the Swan. Popularly called the…
Siccar Point on Mars
What created this unusual hill on Mars? No one is sure. A good outlook to survey the surrounding area, Siccar Point stands out from its surroundings in Gale Crater . The unusual…
Jupiter from the Webb Space Telescope
This new view of Jupiter is illuminating. High-resolution infrared images of Jupiter from the new James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) reveal, for example, previously unknown…
The Horsehead Nebula Region without Stars
The famous Horsehead Nebula in Orion is not alone. A deep exposure shows that the dark familiar shape d indentation, visible just right of center, is part of a vast complex of…
Viewing discoveries from 22 September 2022 through 29 August 2022.