Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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Cygnus: Bubble and Crescent
As stars die, they create clouds. Two stellar death clouds of gas and dust can be found toward the high-flying constellation of the Swan (Cygnus) as they drift through rich star…
Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 Fragments
Periodic comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 has broken up at least twice. A cosmic souffle of ice and dust left over from the early solar system, this comet was first seen to split…
NGC 7023: The Iris Nebula
These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus . Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke…
The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
In 1716 , English astronomer Edmond Halley noted, “This is but a little Patch, but it shows itself to the naked Eye, when the Sky is serene and the Moon absent.” Of course, M13 is…
The Crew-7 Nebula
Not the James Webb Space Telescope's latest view of a distant galactic nebula, this illuminated cloud of gas and dust dazzled early morning spacecoast skygazers on August 26. The…
Full Moons of August
Near perigee , the closest point in its almost moonthly orbit, a Full Moon rose as the Sun set on August 1. Its brighter than average lunar disk was captured in this dramatic…
Unusual Spiral Galaxy M66 from Webb
Why isn't spiral galaxy M66 symmetric? Usually, density waves of gas, dust, and newly formed stars circle a spiral galaxy 's center and create a nearly symmetric galaxy . The…
Star Formation in the Pacman Nebula
Look through the cosmic cloud cataloged as NGC 281 and you might miss the stars of open cluster IC 1590 . Formed within the nebula , that cluster's young, massive stars ultimately…
Three Galaxies and a Comet
Diffuse starlight and dark nebulae along the southern Milky Way arc over the horizon and sprawl diagonally through this gorgeous nightscape. The breath-taking mosaic spans a wide…
Crescents of Venus
Just as the Moon goes through phases, Venus' visible sunlit hemisphere waxes and wanes . This sequence of telescopic images illustrates the steady changes for Venus during its…
A Season of Saturn
Ringed planet Saturn will be at its 2023 opposition, opposite the Sun in Earth's skies, on August 27. While that puts the sixth planet from the Sun at its brightest and…
Meteors along the Milky Way
Under dark and mostly moonless night skies, many denizens of planet Earth were able to watch this year's Perseid meteor shower. Seen from a grassy hillside from Shiraz, Iran these…
The Meteor and the Galaxy
It came from outer space . It -- in this case a sand-sized bit of a comet nucleus -- was likely ejected many years ago from Sun-orbiting Comet Swift-Tuttle , but then continued to…
The Pistachio Nebula
This nebula had never been noted before. Newly discovered nebulas are usually angularly small and found by professionals using large telescopes. In contrast, the Pistachio Nebula…
Introducing Comet Nishimura
Will Comet Nishimura become visible to the unaided eye? Given the unpredictability of comets, no one can say for sure, but it currently seems like a good bet. The comet was…
A Roll Cloud Over Wisconsin
What kind of cloud is this? A type of arcus cloud called a roll cloud . These rare long clouds may form near advancing cold fronts. In particular, a downdraft from an advancing…
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 Sun…
Northern Pluto
Gaze across the frozen canyons of northern Pluto in this contrast enhanced color scene. The image data used to construct it was acquired in July 2015 by the New Horizons…
A Cosmic Zoo in Cepheus
Sprawling emission nebulae IC 1396 and Sh2-129 mix glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds in this nearly 12 degree wide field of view toward the northern constellation…
Arp 93: A Cosmic Embrace
Locked in a cosmic embrace , two large galaxies are merging at the center of this sharp telescopic field of view. The interacting system cataloged as Arp 93 is some 200 million…
A Triply Glowing Night Sky over Iceland
The Sun is not the quiet place it seems. It expels an unsteady stream of energetic electron s and proton s known as the solar wind . These charged particles deform the Earth's…
The Ring Nebula from Webb and Hubble
The Ring Nebula (M57) , is more complicated than it appears through a small telescope. The easily visible central ring is about one light-year across, but this remarkable combined…
The Sombrero Galaxy in Infrared
This floating ring is the size of a galaxy. In fact, it is a galaxy -- or at least part of one: the photogenic Sombrero Galaxy , one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo…
Ghirigori - Star Scribbles
It's fun to scribble on the canvas of the sky . You can use a creative photographic technique to cause the light of point-like stars to dance across a digital image by tapping…
Viewing discoveries from 4 September 2023 through 12 August 2023.