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.
Meteors Now and Again
The Perseid Meteor Shower , usually the best meteor shower of the year, will peak over the next two nights. Over the course of an hour, a person watching a clear sky from a dark…
Shapley 1: An Annular Planetary Nebula
What happens when a star runs out of nuclear fuel ? The center condenses into a white dwarf while the outer atmospheric layers are expelled into space and appear as a planetary…
The Cygnus Loop
15,000 years ago a star in the constellation of Cygnus exploded -- the shockwave from this supernova explosion is still expanding into interstellar space! The collision of this…
M65 Without Moth
Messier 65 ( M65 ) is a bright spiral galaxy of stars only 35 million light-years away in the constellation Leo . With very tightly wound spiral arms , a large central bulge, and…
Infrared Horsehead
This famous cosmic dust cloud was imaged in infrared light by the European Space Agency's Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) satellite. The false-color picture shows the bright…
Ganymede: Torn Comet - Crater Chain
This remarkable line of 13 closely spaced craters on Jupiter's moon Ganymede was photographed by the Galileo spacecraft in 1997. The picture covers an area about 120 miles wide…
Jupiter Swallows Comet Shoemaker Levy 9
What happens when a comet encounters a planet? If the planet has a rocky surface, a huge impact feature will form. A giant planet like Jupiter , however, is mostly gas . When…
M44: A Beehive of Stars
M44 is a prominent open cluster of stars. Nicknamed Praesepe and “The Beehive”, it is one of the few open clusters visible to the unaided eye. M44 was thought to be a nebula until…
Galaxy Dwingeloo 1 Emerges
Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. But if you look closely at the center of the above photograph , you will see a whole spiral galaxy behind the field of stars.…
A String Of Pearls
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 , named after its co-discoverers , was often referred to as the “string of pearls” comet. It is famous for its suggestive appearance as well as its…
IRAS Orion
Do you recognize the constellation Orion ? This striking but unfamiliar looking picture of the familiar Orion region of the sky was produced using survey data from the InfraRed…
Volcanos on Mars: Elysium Region
This “synthetic color” image swath of the Elysium Volcanic Region of Mars was recorded by Mars Global Surveyor's wide angle camera on July 2. North is up and the sun illuminates…
The High Energy Heart Of The Milky Way
These high resolution false color pictures of the Galactic center region in high energy X-ray and gamma-ray light result from a very long exposure of roughly 3,000 hours performed…
Impact on Jupiter
In 1993, a strange string of comet pieces was discovered near the planet Jupiter . So unusual a sight, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) quickly became the object of much scientific…
N81: Starbirth in the SMC
A very young star cluster has been discovered in a neighboring galaxy. The stars found in this cluster, dubbed N81, are so young and massive that they furiously eject matter and…
Antares
Antares is a huge star. In a class called red supergiant , Antares is about 700 times the diameter of our own Sun , 15 times more massive, and 10,000 times brighter. Antares is…
Hawaii
Aloha! With the graceful arc of the Earth's limb in the background, the Hawaiian Island archipelago is visible in this stunning photo taken by the astronauts onboard the shuttle…
Alan B. Shepard Jr. 1923-1998
On another Friday (May 5, 1961), at the dawn of the space age , NASA controllers “lit the candle” and sent Alan B. Shepard Jr. arcing into space atop a Redstone rocket . The…
X-Ray Pulsar
This dramatic artist's vision shows a city-sized neutron star centered in a disk of hot plasma drawn from its enfeebled red companion star. Ravenously accreting material from the…
Dark Craters on Ganymede
Ganymede has craters within craters within craters . The old surface of the largest moon in the Solar System shows its age by the large amount of these impact features. The above…
Nearby Spiral M33
M33 is a prominent nearby spiral galaxy. Nicknamed the Triangulum , M33 is one of the larger members of the Local Group of Galaxies . Two massive spiral galaxies dominate the…
La Nina Watch
Goodbye El Niño . Hello La Niña ? Scientists are watching to see if an evolving pool of relatively cool water in the mid-Pacific Ocean will develop into a full “La Niña”. Over the…
Globular Cluster M3
This huge ball of stars predates our Sun. Long before mankind evolved, before dinosaurs roamed , and even before our Earth existed, ancient globs of stars condensed and orbited a…
Rockets and Robert Goddard
Robert H. Goddard , one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry, was born in Worcester Massachusetts in 1882. As a 16 year old, Goddard read H.G. Wells' science fiction classic…
Viewing discoveries from 10 August 1998 through 18 July 1998.