Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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Comet Lemmon Brightens
Comet Lemmon is brightening and moving into morning northern skies. Besides Comet SWAN25B and Comet ATLAS , Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) is now the third comet currently visible with…
Two Camera Comets in One Sky
It may look like these comets are racing, but they are not. Comets C/2025 K1 ATLAS (left) and C/2025 R2 SWAN (right) appeared near each other by chance last week in the featured…
Leopard Spots on Martian Rocks
What is creating these unusual spots? Light-colored spots on Martian rocks , each surrounded by a dark border, were discovered last year by NASA 's Perseverance Rover currently…
A Rocket in the Sun
On the morning of September 24 a rocket crosses the bright solar disk in this long range telescopic snapshot captured from Orlando, Florida. That's about 50 miles west of its…
A SWAN, an ATLAS, and Mars
A new visitor to the inner Solar System, comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) sports a long ion tail extending diagonally across this almost 7 degree wide telescopic field of view recorded on…
Saturn Opposite the Sun
This year Saturn was at opposition on September 21, opposite the Sun in planet Earth's sky. At its closest to Earth, Saturn was also at its brightest of the year, rising as the…
GW250114: Rotating Black Holes Collide
It was the strongest gravitational wave signal yet measured -- what did it show? GW250114 was detected by both arms of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory…
NGC 6357: Cathedral to Massive Stars
How massive can a normal star be? Estimates made from distance, brightness and standard solar models had given one star in the open cluster Pismis 24 over 200 times the mass of…
Equinox at Saturn
On Saturn, the rings tell you the season. On Earth , today marks an equinox, the time when the Earth's equator tilts directly toward the Sun. Since Saturn's grand rings orbit…
Equinox Sunset
Does the Sun set in the same direction every day? No, the direction of sunset depends on the time of the year. Although the Sun always sets approximately toward the west, on an…
Gibbous vs Crescent
Early risers around planet Earth have enjoyed a shining crescent Moon near brilliant Venus, close to the eastern horizon in recent morning twilight skies. And yesterday, on…
The NGC 6914 Complex
A study in contrasts, this colorful cosmic skyscape features stars, dust, and glowing gas in the vicinity of NGC 6914. The interstellar complex of nebulae lies some 6,000…
Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN)
A new visitor from the outer Solar System , comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) also known as SWAN25B was only discovered late last week, on September 11. That's just a day before the comet…
Nebulas and Clusters in Sagittarius
Can you spot famous celestial objects in this image? 18th-century astronomer Charles Messier cataloged only two of them: the bright Lagoon Nebula (M8) at the bottom, and the…
New Comet SWAN25B over Mexico
A newly discovered comet is already visible with binoculars. The comet, C/2025 R2 (SWAN) and nicknamed SWAN25B, is brightening significantly as it emerges from the Sun's direction…
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Earth During a Powerful Solar Storm
Can our Sun become dangerous? Yes, sometimes. Every few years our Sun ejects a scary-large bubble of hot gas into the Solar System . Every hundred years or so, when the timing,…
Planets of the Solar System: Tilts and Spins
How does your favorite planet spin? Does it spin rapidly around a nearly vertical axis, or horizontally, or backwards? The featured video animates NASA images of all eight planets…
Star Trails over One-Mile Radio Telescope
The steerable 60 foot diameter dish antenna of the One-Mile Telescope at Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory , Cambridge, UK, is pointing skyward in this evocative night-skyscape.…
Lunar Eclipse in Two Hemispheres
September's total lunar eclipse is tracked across night skies from both the northern and southern hemispheres of planet Earth in these two dramatic timelapse series. In the…
The Umbra of Earth
The dark, inner shadow of planet Earth is called the umbra . Shaped like a cone extending into space, it has a circular cross section most easily seen during a lunar eclipse . And…
The Great Lacerta Nebula
It is one of the largest nebulas on the sky -- why isn't it better known? Roughly the same angular size as the Andromeda Galaxy , the Great Lacerta Nebula can be found toward the…
Up from the Earth: Gigantic Jet Lightning
What's that rising up from the Earth? When circling the Earth on the International Space Station early in July , astronaut Nicole Ayers saw an unusual type of lightning rising up…
IRAS 04302: Butterfly Disk Planet Formation
This butterfly can hatch planets. The nebula fanning out from the star IRAS 04302+2247 may look like the wings of a butterfly , while the vertical brown stripe down the center may…
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…
Viewing discoveries from 30 September 2025 through 7 September 2025.