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.
A Night Sky over the Tatra Mountains
A natural border between Slovakia and Poland is the Tatra Mountains . A prominent destination for astrophotographers, the Tatras are the highest mountain range in the Carpathians…
Horsehead and Orion Nebulas
The dark Horsehead Nebula and the glowing Orion Nebula are contrasting cosmic vistas. Adrift 1,500 light-years away in one of the night sky's most recognizable constellation s,…
Mars: Moon, Craters, and Volcanos
If you could fly over Mars, what might you see? The featured image shows exactly this in the form of a Mars Express vista captured over a particularly interesting region on Mars…
M31: The Andromeda Galaxy
The most distant object easily visible to the unaided eye is M31 , the great Andromeda Galaxy . Even at some two and a half million light-year s distant, this immense spiral…
Small Moon Deimos
Mars has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos , named for the figures in Greek mythology Fear and Panic. Detailed surface views of smaller moon Deimos are shown in both these panels.…
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…
NGC 247 and Friends
About 70,000 light-years across, NGC 247 is a spiral galaxy smaller than our Milky Way. Measured to be only 11 million light-years distant it is nearby though. Tilted nearly…
NGC 6995: The Bat Nebula
Can you see the bat? It haunts this cosmic close-up of the eastern Veil Nebula . The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, the expanding debris cloud from the death…
Quarter Moon and Sister Stars
Nine days ago, two quite different sky icons were imaged rising together. Specifically, Earth's Moon shared the eastern sky with the sister stars of the Pleiades cluster, as…
A Triangular Prominence Hovers Over the Sun
Why is there a triangle hovering over the Sun? Although the shape is unusual, the type of structure is not: it is part of an evolving solar prominence . Looping magnetic fields on…
The Moon Dressed Like Saturn
Why does Saturn appear so big? It doesn't -- what is pictured are foreground clouds on Earth crossing in front of the Moon . The Moon shows a slight crescent phase with most of…
IFN and the NGC 7771 Group
Galaxies of the NGC 7771 Group are featured in this intriguing skyscape . Some 200 million light-years distant toward the constellation Pegasus, NGC 7771 is the large, edge-on…
Southern Moonscape
The Moon's south pole is toward the top left of this detailed telescopic moonscape . Captured on August 23, it looks across the rugged southern lunar highlands. The view's…
Star Factory Messier 17
A nearby star factory known as Messier 17 lies some 5,500 light-years away in the nebula-rich constellation Sagittarius . At that distance, this 1.5 degree wide field-of-view…
Tulip Nebula and Black Hole Cygnus X-1
When can you see a black hole, a tulip, and a swan all at once? At night -- if the timing is right, and if your telescope is pointed in the right direction . The complex and…
Gallery:
What if Saturn disappeared? Sometimes, it does. It doesn't really go away, though, it just disappears from view when our Moon moves in front . Such a Saturnian eclipse, more…
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.…
Fresh Tiger Stripes on Saturn's Enceladus
Do underground oceans vent through canyons on Saturn's moon Enceladus? Long features dubbed tiger stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon's icy interior into space,…
South Pacific Shadowset
The full Moon and Earth's shadow set together in this island skyscape. The alluring scene was captured Tuesday morning, August 20, from Fiji, South Pacific Ocean, planet Earth.…
Supernova Remnant CTA 1
There is a quiet pulsar at the heart of CTA 1. The supernova remnant was discovered as a source of emission at radio wavelengths by astronomers in 1960 and since identified as the…
The Dark Tower in Scorpius
In silhouette against a crowded star field along the tail of the arachnological constellation Scorpius , this dusty cosmic cloud evokes for some the image of an ominous dark…
Fermi's 12-year All-Sky Gamma-ray Map
Forget X-ray vision — imagine what you could see with gamma-ray vision! The featured all-sky map shows what the universe looks like to NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope .…
Supermoon Beyond the Temple of Poseidon
A supermoon occurred yesterday. And tonight's moon should also look impressive. Supermoons appear slightly larger and brighter than most full moons because they reach their full…
IC 5146: The Cocoon Nebula
Inside the Cocoon Nebula is a newly developing cluster of stars. Cataloged as IC 5146 , the beautiful nebula is nearly 15 light-year s wide. Soaring high in northern summer night…
Viewing discoveries from 11 September 2024 through 19 August 2024.