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.
NGC 6070: First Light for Sloan
The graceful spiral galaxy NGC 6070, 100 million light-years distant in the constellation Serpens, is helping astronomers celebrate "First Light" (the first test sky images) for…
Ice Cusps on Europa
Europa's icy crust has many unusual features. Pictured above is part of Europa 's southern hemisphere photographed by the Galileo spacecraft currently orbiting Jupiter . Europa is…
A Mars Glint
If aligned just right, even a planet can produce a glint . The above combined pictures of Mars make the red planet appear unusually elongated - Mars is really almost spherical .…
The Hubble Deep Field
Galaxies like colorful pieces of candy fill the Hubble Deep Field - humanity's most distant yet optical view of the Universe . The dimmest, some as faint as 30th magnitude (about…
M100: A Grand Design
Majestic on a truly cosmic scale, M100 is appropriately known as a Grand Design spiral galaxy . A large galaxy of over 100 billion or so stars with well defined spiral arms , it…
Neutrinos in the Sun
Neutrinos , along with things like electrons and quarks, are fundamental pieces of matter according to physicists' Standard Model . But neutrinos are hard to detect. Readily…
Comet SOHO and Nebulae in Orion
Astrophotographer Michael Horn captured this gorgeous view of comet SOHO in the dark night sky above Wandibindle, Queensland, Australia on May 23rd. On this date , comet SOHO was…
Martian Crater Shows Evidence of Dried Pond
Did a pond once exist in this Martian crater? Recent photographs by the spacecraft Mars Global Surveyor , currently in orbit around Mars , show features unusual for Mars yet…
NGC 6302: The Butterfly Nebula
The Butterfly Nebula is only thousands of years old. As a central star of a binary system aged, it threw off its outer envelopes of gas in a strong stellar wind . The remaining…
Solar Flares Cause Sun Quakes
An 11th magnitude quake has been recorded on the Sun , immediately following a moderate solar flare . The quake was the first ever recorded on the Sun , but only because…
Phobos: Doomed Moon of Mars
Phobos is doomed. Mars , the red planet named for the Roman god of war, has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos , whose names are derived from the Greek for Fear and Panic. These…
Water World
Water (Dihydrogen Oxide, H2O) is a truly remarkable chemical compound, fundamental to life on Earth . Earth is the only planet in the Solar System where the present surface…
An Extrasolar Planet?
This infrared Hubble Space Telescope view may contain the first ever direct image of a planet outside our own solar system. The picture shows a very young double star located…
Afterglow
This sequence of three false color X-ray pictures from the Italian/Dutch BeppoSAX satellite follows the fading glow from a gamma-ray burster . This burster triggered orbiting…
Magnetar
What do you call a neutron star with a super-strong magnetic field? You guessed it ... a Magnetar . Imagine a star with more mass than the sun, the density of a neutron, and a…
A Seemingly Square Sun
Isn't the Sun round? Yes, but in the above picture, the Earth's atmosphere makes it appear almost square. Here a layer of air near the Earth was so warm it acted like a giant lens…
M83: A Barred Spiral Galaxy
M83 is a bright spiral galaxy that can be found with a small telescope in the constellation of Hydra . M83 is a member of the Centaurus group of galaxies, a nearby group dominated…
A High Energy Fleet
Looking like a fleet of futuristic starcruisers, NASA's highly successful series of High Energy Astrophysical Observatory (HEAO) spacecraft appear poised over planet Earth .…
7,000 Stars And The Milky Way
This panorama view of the sky is really a drawing. It was made in the 1950s under the supervision of astronomer Knut Lundmark at the Lund Observatory in Sweden. To create the…
The Center of Centaurus A
A fantastic jumble of young blue star clusters, gigantic glowing gas clouds, and imposing dark dust lanes surrounds the central region of the active galaxy Centaurus A. This…
Bright Comet SOHO
Discovered this month with an orbiting solar observatory, bright Comet SOHO has now emerged from the Sun's glare. This telephoto picture of the new naked-eye comet was taken by…
Discovery Image: Comet SOHO (1998 J1)
Staring at the Sun from a vantage point in space ( Kids , don't try this at home!), the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory ( SOHO ) has enabled the discovery of much about our…
Apollo 11: Onto a New World
A human first set foot on another world on July 20, 1969 . This world was Earth's own Moon . Pictured above is Neil Armstrong preparing to take the historic first step . On the…
NGC 6369: A Donut Shaped Nebula
Why isn't the star in the center of the nebula? NGC 6369 appears to be a fairly ordinary planetary nebula . It can be seen with a good telescope in the constellation of Ophiuchus…
Viewing discoveries from 10 June 1998 through 18 May 1998.