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.
Jupiter's Europa from Spacecraft Juno
What mysteries might be solved by peering into this crystal ball? In this case, the ball is actually a moon of Jupiter , the crystals are ice, and the moon is not only dirty but…
Supernova Cannon Expels Pulsar J0002
What could shoot out a neutron star like a cannon ball? A supernova. About 10,000 years ago, the supernova that created the nebular remnant CTB 1 not only destroyed a massive star…
Lunation Matrix
Observe the Moon every night and you'll see its visible sunlit portion gradually change. In phases progressing from New Moon to Full Moon to New Moon again, a lunar cycle or…
Equinox Sunrise Around the World
A planet-wide collaboration resulted in this remarkable array of sunrise photographs taken around the September 2022 equinox . The images were contributed by 24 photographers, one…
DART Asteroid Impact from Space
Fifteen days before impact, the DART spacecraft deployed a small companion satellite to document its historic planetary defense technology demonstration. Provided by the Italian…
A Furious Sky over Mount Shasta
Is the sky angry with Mount Shasta? According to some ancient legends , the spirits of above and below worlds fight there, sometimes quite actively during eruptions of this…
DART: Impact on Asteroid Dimorphos
Could humanity deflect an asteroid headed for Earth? Yes. Deadly impacts from large asteroids have happened before in Earth's past, sometimes causing mass extinctions of life. To…
All the Water on Planet Earth
How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually. Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth's surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the…
The Fairy of Eagle Nebula
The dust sculptures of the Eagle Nebula are evaporating. As powerful starlight whittles away these cool cosmic mountains , the statuesque pillars that remain might be imagined as…
September Sunrise Shadows
The defining astronomical moment for this September's equinox was on Friday, September 23, 2022 at 01:03 UTC, when the Sun crossed the celestial equator moving south in its yearly…
Ringed Ice Giant Neptune
Ringed, ice giant Neptune lies near the center of this sharp near-infrared image from the James Webb Space Telescope . The dim and distant world is the farthest planet from the…
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…
Planets of the Solar System: Tilts and Spins
How does your favorite planet spin? Does it spin rapidly around a nearly vertical axis, or horizontally, or backwards? The featured video animates NASA images of all eight planets…
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…
Viewing discoveries from 3 October 2022 through 10 September 2022.