Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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Reflections on NGC 6188
NGC 6188 is an interstellar carnival of young blue stars , hot red gas , and cool dark dust . Located 4000 light years away in the disk of our Galaxy, NGC 6188 is home to the Ara…
A Network of Microlensing Caustics
A virtual sky map like this would be of interest to astronomers studying gravitational microlensing. In microlensing , the gravity of stars near the line of sight can act to…
Sundogs over the VLA
What if you woke up one morning and saw more than one Sun in the sky? Most probably, you would be seeing sundogs , extra-images of the Sun created by falling ice-crystals in 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…
Galaxies Away
This striking pair of galaxies is far, far away ... about 350 million light-years from Earth . Cataloged as AM0500-620 , the pair is located in the southern constellation Dorado .…
At The Sun's Edge
This dramatic set of prominences looms beyond the edge of the sun. The image was captured by astrophotographer Bob Yen as he stood in the moon's shadow near Bagdere, Turkey on…
Light From The Dark Sun
Only in the fleeting darkness of a total solar eclipse is the light of the solar corona easily visible from Earth. Normally overwhelmed by the bright solar disk, the expansive…
Sun Block
During a total solar eclipse, Earth's moon blocks the sun - almost exactly. While the sun is about 400 times wider than the moon, it is also about 400 times farther away and each…
A Crescent Sunrise
Normally, the Moon shows phases, but the Sun does not. The reason is founded in the fact that the Moon shines only by reflected sunlight. When the Moon is closer to the Sun than…
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…
Viewing discoveries from 25 August 1999 through 2 August 1999.