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.
Mars Weather Watch
Mars may be a cold, dry planet but its weather is dynamic. On June 30, wide angle cameras on board the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft watched the development of this large…
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…
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…
Eclipse In The Shade
Near the shadow of the moon under a shady tree, dozens of images of a 1994 solar eclipse in progress are visible in this striking picture from the campus of Northwestern…
Deploying Spartan
Last October the Space Shuttle Discovery deployed Spartan 201 , a spacecraft that monitored the corona of the Sun . Instruments on Spartan 201 were used to estimate the density of…
A Meteor Over the Anza-Borrego Desert
Meteors will be flashing across your skies over the next two nights . Specifically, the Perseid Meteor Shower should be at its best just before each morning's dawn. Observers at…
A Total Eclipse for Europe
The last total solar eclipse of this millennium will be visible for a few minutes tomorrow from a narrow path in Europe and Asia . There, millions of sightseers will witness the…
A Martian Dust Storm Approaches
Batten down the hatches, here comes another Martian dust storm. The thin soil on Mars can be picked up by high winds to create dust storms that sweep down plains and can sometimes…
Comet Hale-Bopp Over Val Parola Pass
Comet Hale-Bopp became much brighter than any surrounding stars. It was seen even over bright city lights. Out away from city lights, however, it put on quite a spectacular show .…
Ida and Dactyl: Asteroid and Moon
This asteroid has a moon ! The robot spacecraft Galileo currently exploring the Jovian system , encountered and photographed two asteroids during its long journey to Jupiter . The…
Hubble Tracks Jupiter's Great Red Spot
It is a hurricane twice the size of the Earth . It has been raging at least as long as telescopes could see it, and shows no signs of slowing. It is Jupiter 's Great Red Spot, the…
Asteroid 9969 Braille
NASA probe Deep Space 1 zoomed past asteroid 9969 Braille last week as it continued to test its new ion drive in the inner Solar System . The flyby was the closest approach a…
The Surface of Titan
If sailing the hydrocarbon seas of Titan , beware of gasoline rain. Such might be a travel advisory issued next millennium for adventurers visiting Titan , the largest moon of…
The Vela Supernova Remnant Expands
The explosion is over but the consequences continue. About eleven thousand years ago a star in the constellation of Vela exploded, creating a strange point of light briefly…
Regulus Occulted
On May 21, viewed from the continental US, a star winked out as it passed behind the dark limb of the first-quarter Moon . The star, Regulus , is hotter than the sun, about 69…
Walking in Space
Pictured above is the first american astronaut to walk in space: Edward White . White is seen floating outside the Gemini 4 capsule in 1965. The term spacewalk is deceiving since…
X-Ray Triple Jet
Recorded on July 7, 1998 , this animation using X-ray images of the Sun shows an amazing event - three nearly simultaneous jets connected with solar active regions. The two frames…
The Sea of Tranquillity: 5 Seconds To Impact
On February 20th, 1965, the Ranger 8 spacecraft crashed into the Moon . Rapidly transmitting a series of pictures to ground controllers, its camera recorded this one at an…
Hydrogen Blob N88A in the Small Magellanic Cloud
The bright blob of hydrogen gas cataloged as N88A is seen at the right. It measures a mere 3 light years across. Emerging from the cool, dusty interstellar medium in a nearby…
Asia at Night
This is what Asia looks like at night! Can you find your favorite Asian city? Although not all of Asia is shown, city lights might make this task possible. The above picture is…
Chandra X-ray Telescope
Wrapped in protective blankets and mounted atop an Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) rocket, the Chandra X-ray Telescope is seen in this wide-angle view before launch snuggled into the…
Noctilucent Clouds
Sometimes it's night on the ground but day in the air. As the Earth rotates to eclipse the Sun, sunset rises up from the ground. Therefore, at sunset on the ground, sunlight still…
The Cygnus Loop
The shockwave from a 20,000 year-old supernova in the constellation of Cygnus supernova explosion is still expanding into interstellar space. The collision of this fast moving…
Infrared Saturn
This delightfully detailed false color image of Saturn was earmarked to celebrate the 8th anniversary of the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope . The picture is a combination of…
Viewing discoveries from 16 August 1999 through 24 July 1999.