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.
Moon Mountains Magnified during Ring of Fire Eclipse
What are those dark streaks in this composite image of a solar eclipse? They are reversed shadows of mountains at the edge of the Moon. The center image, captured from Xiamen ,…
Fireball over Iceland
On September 12, from a location just south of the Arctic Circle, stones of Iceland's modern Arctic Henge point skyward in this startling scene. Entertaining an intrepid group of…
Venus, Moon, and the Smoking Mountain
Venus has returned , now appearing in planet Earth's predawn skies as a brilliant morning star . From a window seat on a flight to Mexico City, the bright celestial beacon was…
NGC 7331 and Beyond
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…
NGC 4632: Galaxy with a Hidden Polar Ring
Galaxy NGC 4632 hides a secret from optical telescopes. It is surrounded by a ring of cool hydrogen gas orbiting at 90 degrees to its spiral disk. Such polar ring galaxies have…
Galaxy Cluster Abell 370 and Beyond
Some 4 billion light-years away, massive galaxy cluster Abell 370 is captured in this sharp Hubble Space Telescope snapshot . The cluster of galaxies only appears to be dominated…
Beautiful Comet Nishimura
This scene would be beautiful even without the comet. By itself, the sunrise sky is an elegant deep blue on high, with faint white stars peeking through, while near the horizon is…
An Annular Solar Eclipse over New Mexico
What is this person doing? In 2012, an annular eclipse of the Sun was visible over a narrow path that crossed the northern Pacific Ocean and several western US states . In an…
Comet Nishimura Grows
Comet Nishimura is growing. More precisely, the tails C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) are growing as it nears the Sun. Discovered only last month, the comet is already near naked eye…
Star Factory Messier 17
Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, the star factory known as Messier 17 lies some 5,500 light-years away in the nebula-rich constellation Sagittarius . At that distance,…
The Large Cloud of Magellan
The 16th century Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and his crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during the first circumnavigation of planet Earth. As a result,…
HESS Telescopes Explore the High-Energy Sky
They may look like modern mechanical dinosaurs, but they are enormous swiveling eyes that watch the sky. The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) Observatory is composed of…
Blue Supermoon Beyond Syracuse
The last full moon was doubly unusual. First of all, it was a blue moon . A modern definition of a blue moon is a second full moon to occur during one calendar month. Since there…
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…
Viewing discoveries from 17 September 2023 through 25 August 2023.