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.
Water Ice At The Lunar Poles
After seven weeks in lunar orbit, instruments on board NASA's Lunar Prospector spacecraft have produced strong evidence for water ice on the Moon . While not in extensive sheets,…
Canaries Sky
This gorgeous view of stars, nebulae, and the Milky Way comes from the dark night sky above the lovely island of La Palma in the Canaries archipelago . The picture was made by a…
Aurora Over Alaska
Higher than the highest mountain , higher than the highest airplane, lies the realm of the aurora . Aurora rarely reach below 60 kilometers, and can range up to 1000 kilometers.…
560 Kilometers Above Europa
This is the closest photograph ever taken of Europa . Last December, NASA's spacecraft Galileo swept past the Jovian moon and took photographs which were released yesterday .…
Rumors of a Strange Universe
In a meeting in California two weeks ago, unpublished results were presented indicating that most of the energy in our universe is not in stars or galaxies but is tied to space…
A Sky Full Of Hydrogen
Interstellar space is filled with extremely tenuous clouds of gas which are mostly Hydrogen. The neutral hydrogen atom (HI in astronomer's shorthand) consists of 1 proton and 1…
Eagle EGGs in M16
Star forming regions known as “EGGs” are uncovered at the end of this giant pillar of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula ( M 16). EGGs, short for evaporating gaseous globules , are…
Solar Eclipse: A Composite View
Yesterday , the Moon's shadow reached out and touched the Earth , treating a large portion of the Western Hemisphere to an Eclipse of the Sun . This composite image combines…
A Southern Sky View
From horizon to horizon, the night sky above Loomberah, New South Wales, Australia was photographed by astronomer Gordon Garradd on March 22, 1996. Garradd used a home made…
The Solar Neighborhood
You are here. The orange dot in the above false-color drawing represents the current location of the Sun among local gas clouds in the spiral Milky Way Galaxy . These gas clouds…
The Lyman Alpha Forest
We live in a forest. Strewn throughout the universe are “trees” of hydrogen gas that absorb light from distant objects. These gas clouds leave numerous absorption lines in a…
M104: The Sombrero Galaxy
What's going on in the center of this spiral galaxy ? Named the Sombrero Galaxy for its hat-like resemblance, M104 features a prominent dust lane and a bright halo of stars and…
Southern Lights and Shuttle Glow
A background of distant stars, sinuous and spiky bands of Southern Lights (Aurora Australis) , and the faint glow of charged plasma ( ionized atomic gas ) surrounding the Space…
Neptune: Big Blue Giant
This picture was taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989 - the only spacecraft ever to visit Neptune. Neptune will be the farthest planet from the Sun until 1999, when the…
Hale-Bopp: A Continuing Tail
Where is Hale-Bopp now? The Great Comet of 1997 , one of the largest and most active comets ever, is outbound about 400 million miles from the sun. Too faint for viewing without…
Miranda
Miranda is a bizarre world which surely had a tempest uous past. The innermost of the larger Uranian moons, Miranda is almost 300 miles in diameter and was discovered only 50…
M27: The Dumbbell Nebula
The first hint of what will become of our Sun was discovered inadvertently in 1764. At that time, Charles Messier was compiling a list of “annoying” diffuse objects not to be…
Shocked by Supernova 1987a
Eleven years ago the brightest supernova of modern times was recorded. Now the expanding debris from this tremendous stellar explosion is seen to be crashing into previously…
Sagittarius Dwarf to Collide with Milky Way
Our Galaxy is being invaded. Recent observations indicate that in the next 100 million years, the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy will move though the disk of our own Milky Way Galaxy…
Stars Without Galaxies
Galaxies are made up of stars, but are all stars found within galaxies ? Using the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers exploring the Virgo Cluster of galaxies have now found about…
The Rosette Nebula
Would the Rosette Nebula by any other name look as sweet ? The bland New General Catalog designation of NGC 2237 doesn't appear to diminish the appearance of the this flowery…
Explorer I
Inaugurating the era of space exploration for the US, the First Explorer was launched into Earth orbit forty years ago (February 1, 1958) by the Army Ballistic Missle Agency . The…
In A Grand Canyon On Mars
In a grand canyon on Mars , steep slopes fall away from a smooth plateau revealing striking layered rock formations. The canyon is part of the Valles Marineris , a 2,500 mile long…
Ultra-Fast Pulsar
Pulsars are rotating neutron stars , born in the violent crucibles of supernova explosions . Like cosmic lighthouses , beams of radiation from surface hotspots sweep past our…
Viewing discoveries from 6 March 1998 through 11 February 1998.