Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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Titan Touchdown: Huygens Descent Movie
What would it look like to land on Saturn's moon Titan? The European Space Agency's Huygens probe set down on the Solar System's cloudiest moon in 2005, and a time-lapse video of…
Rocket Launch as Seen from the International Space Station
Have you ever seen a rocket launch -- from space? A close inspection of the featured time-lapse video will reveal a rocket rising to Earth orbit as seen from the International…
Driveway Analemma
Does the Sun return to the same spot on the sky every day? No. A more visual answer is an analemma, a composite of sky images taken at the same time and from the same place over a…
Journey to the Center of the Galaxy
What lies at the center of our galaxy? In Jules Verne's science fiction classic, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Professor Liedenbrock and his fellow explorers encounter…
Animation: Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS Tails Prediction
How bright and strange will the tails of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS become? The comet has brightened dramatically over the few weeks as it passed its closest to the Sun and, just…
Aurora Timelapse Over Italian Alps
Did you see last night's aurora? This question was relevant around much of the world a few days ago because a powerful auroral storm became visible unusually far from the Earth's…
Porphyrion: The Longest Known Black Hole Jets
How far can black hole jets extend? A new record was found just recently with the discovery of a 23-million light-year long jet pair from a black hole active billions of years…
Perseid Meteors Over Inner Mongolia
Did you see it? One of the more common questions during a meteor shower occurs because the time it takes for a meteor to flash is similar to the time it takes for a head to turn.…
A Solar Prominence Eruption from SDO
One of the most spectacular solar sights is an erupting prominence. In 2011, NASA's Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamic Observatory spacecraft imaged an impressively large prominence…
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Animation: Perseid Meteor Shower
Where do Perseid meteors come from? Mostly small bits of stony grit, Perseid meteoroids were once expelled from Comet Swift-Tuttle and continue to follow this comet's orbit as…
Gaia: Here Comes the Sun
What would it look like to return home from outside our galaxy? Although designed to answer greater questions, data from ESA's robotic Gaia mission is helping to provide a…
Sun Dance
Sometimes, the surface of our Sun seems to dance. In the middle of 2012, for example, NASA's Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamic Observatory spacecraft imaged an impressive prominence that…
Villarrica Volcano Against the Sky
When Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, swings his blacksmith's hammer, the sky is lit on fire. A recent eruption of Chile's Villarrica volcano) shows the delicate interplay between…
Earthrise: A Video Reconstruction
About 12 seconds into this video, something unusual happens. The Earth begins to rise. Never seen by humans before, the rise of the Earth over the limb of the Moon occurred about…
Timelapse: Aurora, SAR, and the Milky Way
What's happening in the sky this unusual night? Most striking in the featured 4.5-hour 360-degree panoramic video, perhaps, is the pink and purple aurora. That's because this…
Animation: Black Hole Destroys Star
What happens if a star gets too close to a black hole? The black hole can rip it apart -- but how? It's not the high gravitational attraction itself that's the problem -- it's the…
Rotating Moon from LRO
No one, presently, sees the Moon rotate like this. That's because the Earth's moon is tidally locked to the Earth, showing us only one side. Given modern digital technology,…
Solar X Flare as Famous Active Region Returns
It's back. The famous active region on the Sun that created auroras visible around the Earth earlier this month has survived its rotation around the far side of the Sun -- and…
Jupiter Diving
Take this simulated plunge and dive into the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, the Solar System's ruling gas giant. The awesome animation is based on image data from JunoCam, and the…
Simulation: Two Black Holes Merge
Relax and watch two black holes merge. Inspired by the first direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015, this simulation plays in slow motion but would take about one third…
Visualization: A Black Hole Accretion Disk
What would it look like to circle a black hole? If the black hole was surrounded by a swirling disk of glowing and accreting gas, then the great gravity of the black hole would…
A Total Solar Eclipse from Sliver to Ring
This is how the Sun disappeared from the daytime sky last month. The featured time-lapse video was created from stills taken from Mountain View, Arkansas, USA on 2024 April 8.…
Perijove 16: Passing Jupiter
Watch Juno zoom past Jupiter. NASA's robotic spacecraft Juno is continuing on its now month-long, highly-elongated orbits around our Solar System's largest planet. The featured…
How a Total Solar Eclipse Ended
How does a total solar eclipse end? Yes, the Moon moves out from fully blocking the Sun, but in the first few seconds of transition, interesting things appear. The first is called…
Viewing discoveries from 19 January 2025 through 14 April 2024.