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.
Milky Way Auroral Flower
Could the stem of our Milky Way bloom into an auroral flower? No, not really, even though it may appear that way in today's featured all-sky image . On the left, the central plane…
X-Ray Rings Around a Gamma Ray Burst
Why would x-ray rings appear around a gamma-ray burst? The surprising answer has little to do with the explosion itself but rather with light reflected off areas of dust -laden…
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300
Across the center of this spiral galaxy is a bar . And at the center of this bar is smaller spiral . And at the center of that spiral is a supermassive black hole . This all…
GRB 221009A
Gamma-ray burst GRB 221009A likely signals the birth of a new black hole, formed at the core of a collapsing star long ago in the distant universe. The extremely powerful blast is…
The Falcon and the Hunter's Moon
The Full Moon of October 9th was the second Full Moon after the northern hemisphere autumnal equinox, traditionally called the Hunter's Moon. According to lore, the name is a…
Dust Shells around WR 140 from Webb
What are those strange rings? Rich in dust, the rings are likely 3D shells -- but how they were created remains a topic of research . Where they were created is well known: in a…
Ou4: The Giant Squid Nebula
A mysterious squid-like cosmic cloud, this nebula is very faint, but also very large in planet Earth's sky. In the image , composed with 30 hours of narrowband image data, it…
Stars, Dust, Pillars, and Jets in the Pelican Nebula
What dark structures arise within the Pelican Nebula? On the whole, the nebula appears like a bird ( a pelican ) and is seen toward the constellation of a different bird: Cygnus ,…
A Double Lunar Analemma over Turkey
An analemma is that figure-8 curve you get when you mark the position of the Sun at the same time each day for one year. But the trick to imaging an analemma of the Moon is to…
Auroras over Northern Canada
Gusting solar winds and blasts of charged particles from the Sun resulted in several rewarding nights of auroras back in 2014 December, near the peak of the last 11-year solar…
Two Comets in Southern Skies
Heading for its closest approach to the Sun or perihelion on December 20, comet C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) remains a sight for telescopic observers as it sweeps through planet Earth's…
In Ganymede's Shadow
At opposition , opposite the Sun in Earth's sky, late last month Jupiter is also approaching perihelion, the closest point to the Sun in its elliptical orbit, early next year.…
NGC 4631: The Whale Galaxy
NGC 4631 is a big beautiful spiral galaxy. Seen edge-on , it lies only 25 million light-years away in the well-trained northern constellation Canes Venatici . The galaxy's…
Star-Forming Eagle Nebula without Stars
The whole thing looks like an eagle . A closer look at the Eagle Nebula 's center, however, shows the bright region is actually a window into the center of a larger dark shell of…
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…
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…
Viewing discoveries from 18 October 2022 through 23 September 2022.