Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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A Complete Auroral Oval from SMILE
Have you ever seen a complete auroral oval? You can't see one from the ground because it makes too large a circle around one of Earth's magnetic poles. But spacecraft high above…
M104: The Sombrero Galaxy's Tidal Streams
A deep image of the Sombrero galaxy reveals surprises. M104 is named the Sombrero galaxy because, on shorter exposures, it looks like a hat. A key defining feature of this huge…
Supernumerary Rainbows over New Jersey
Yes, but can your rainbow do this? After the remnants of Hurricane Florence passed over the Jersey Shore, New Jersey, USA in 2018, the Sun came out in one direction but something…
Selfie at Vera Rubin Ridge
On sol 1943 of its journey of exploration across the surface of Mars, the Curiosity Rover recorded this selfie at the south rim of Vera Rubin Ridge. Of course a sol is a Martian…
The Complete Sharpless Catalog: 313 Nebulas
What does it take to image hundreds of nebulas? Today’s image contains the entire Sharpless Catalog of H II Regions, totaling 313 objects. Zoom in and explore! You may spot fan…
Harvest Moon with Erupting Mount Etna
Have you ever seen the full moon rise? This colorful image was photographed last weekend in Sicily, just outside the town of Nicosia, in Italy. It is a composite photograph that…
Arp 78: Peculiar Galaxy in Aries
Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78 is found within the boundaries of the head strong constellation Aries. Some 100 million light-years beyond the stars and nebulae of our Milky Way…
Sh2-188: The Shrimp Nebula
What causes the swirl in the Shrimp Nebula? Its high speed is likely. What is sure is that Sh2-188 is one of the larger planetary nebulas on the night sky, by angular size,…
Cosmic Latte: The Average Color of the Universe
What color is the universe? More precisely, if the entire sky were smeared out, what color would the final mix be? This whimsical question came up when trying to determine what…
Andromeda Before Photoshop
What does the Andromeda galaxy really look like? The featured before image shows how our Milky Way Galaxy's closest major galactic neighbor really appears in a long exposure…
Mirrored Meteor and Milky Way
On August 15, this perseid meteor streaked through night skies over the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos at La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. The bright and colorful meteor…
Globular Cluster Omega Centauri
Globular star cluster Omega Centauri packs about 10 million stars much older than the Sun into a volume some 150 light-years in diameter. Also known as NGC 5139, at a distance of…
The Ghosts of Five Supernovas
The ghosts of five supernovas haunt this extraordinary image. It was acquired at Oukaïmeden Observatory in Morocco with approximately 200 hours of observations and shows a large…
A New Lunar Crater: McGetchin
A once-in-a-lifetime crater has appeared on the Moon! A comet or asteroid roughly the size of a humpback whale (approximately 10-20 meters, 30-60 feet) crashed into the Moon…
Chance Triple Alignment: Plane, Space Station, Sun
This shot captured an unexpected silhouette. Which is it? It isn't the sunspots, the small dark regions caused by concentrated magnetic fields visible around the Sun's bright…
Cocoon Nebula Wide Field
When does a nebula look like a comet? In this crowded starfield covering over two degrees within the high-flying constellation of the Swan (Cygnus), the eye is drawn to the Cocoon…
Analemma over the Callanish Stones
If you went outside at the same time every day and took a picture that included the Sun, how would the Sun's position change? A visual answer to that question is an analemma, a…
A Zodiacal Night
Also known as the false dawn, a luminous band of zodiacal light is captured in this dark night skyscape. The serene view was recorded just before the beginning of astronomical…
Messier 33: The Triangulum Galaxy
The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, Messier 33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum…
A Treasure Chest in the Carina Nebula
This treasure chest is full of stars. The featured image was obtained with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and shows a dust pillar in the Carina Nebula inside our Galaxy,…
Webb's View of M64
Sometimes where Hubble finds darkness, Webb sees light. An example is today’s composite images of Messier 64 (M64), a nearby spiral galaxy of many names. The dark band of dust…
A Daytime Eclipse: Moon Occults Venus
There was something behind the clouds. Upon close inspection, it was the Moon, which was hard to see yesterday around noon above the small village of Cessy, France. But soon, it…
Where Your Elements Came From
The hydrogen in your body and present in every molecule of water came from the Big Bang. There are no other appreciable sources of hydrogen in the universe. The carbon in your…
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Comet NEOWISE Rising Over the Adriatic Sea
This sight was worth getting out of bed early. Just over four years ago, Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) rose before dawn to the delight of northern sky enthusiasts awake that early. Up…
Viewing discoveries from 6 October 2026 through 13 September 2026.