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.
Compton Observatory In Orbit
Nine years ago the massive Compton Gamma Ray Observatory was deployed in low earth orbit. Sparkling interior reflections and the bright limb of the Earth are visible in this 1991…
Celebrating Hubble With NGC 6751
Planetary nebulae do look simple, round, and planet-like in small telescopes. But images from the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope have become well known for showing these…
Venus, Moon, and Neighbors
Rising before the Sun on February 2nd, astro photographer Joe Orman anticipated this apparition of the bright morning star Venus near a lovely crescent Moon above a neighbor's…
The M7 Open Star Cluster in Scorpius
M7 is one of the most prominent open clusters of stars on the sky. The cluster, dominated by bright blue stars , can be seen with the naked eye in a dark sky in the tail of the…
A Superwind from the Cigar Galaxy
What's lighting up the Cigar Galaxy? M82 , as this irregular galaxy is also known, was stirred up by a recent pass near large spiral galaxy M81 . This doesn't fully explain the…
A Twisted Solar Eruptive Prominence
A huge eruptive prominence is seen moving out from our Sun in this condensed half-hour time-lapse sequence. Ten Earths could easily fit in the “claw” of this seemingly solar…
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…
Planet Earth from TIROS 1: First TV Image
The Television InfraRed Observational Satellite (TIROS) 1 was the first weather satellite. Launched into a polar orbit 40 years ago (April 1, 1960) equipped with two TV cameras,…
Free-Floating Planets In Orion
This false-colour image of the young Trapezium star cluster in the Orion Nebula was made with an infrared camera at wavelengths about twice as long as visible light. The infrared…
Saturn-Sized Worlds Discovered
The last decade saw the profound discovery of many worlds beyond our solar system, but none analogs of our home planet Earth . Exploiting precise observational techniques,…
Fullerenes as Miniature Cosmic Time Capsules
Scientists have found, unexpectedly, tiny time capsules from billions of years in the past. The discovery involves small molecules that can apparently become trapped during the…
M20: The Trifid Nebula
Unspeakable beauty and unimaginable bedlam can be found together in the Trifid Nebula . Also known as M20, this photogenic nebula is visible with good binoculars towards the…
Flying Over Asteroid Eros
What would it look like to fly over an asteroid? Spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker in orbit around asteroid 433 Eros found out earlier this month when it recorded its first fly-over…
Venus' Once Molten Surface
If you could look at Venus with radar eyes - this is what you might see. This computer reconstruction of the surface of Venus was created from data from the Magellan spacecraft .…
The Earth Also Rises
The Lunar Orbiter 1 spacecraft was launched in 1966 to map the lunar surface in preparation for the Apollo moon landings . NASA's plucky robotic explorer performed its job well…
A Mystery In Gamma Rays
Gamma rays are the most energetic form of light, packing a million or more times the energy of visible light photons. What if you could see gamma rays? If you could, the familiar…
Inside Mars
What's inside Mars ? From orbit, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft has recorded detailed images of the red planet since July 1997. Still, its cameras can not look beneath…
A Spherule from Outer Space
When a meteorite strikes the Moon , the energy of the impact melts some of the splattering rock , a fraction of which might cool into tiny glass beads . Many of these glass beads…
HH111's 12 Light-Year Star Jet
The complex interactions of three stars in the Orion B molecular cloud complex have resulted in the ejection of particles along a 12 light-year long jet. One of the stars in the…
Mercury on the Horizon
Have you ever seen the planet Mercury? Because Mercury orbits so close to the Sun, it is never seen far from the Sun, and so is only visible near sunrise or sunset . If trailing…
Apollo 16: Exploring Plum Crater
Apollo 16 spent three days on Earth's Moon in April 1972. The fifth lunar landing mission out of six, Apollo 16 was famous for deploying and using an ultraviolet telescope as the…
A Wind From The Sun
A wind from the Sun blows through our Solar System . The behaviour of comet tails as they flapped and waved in this interplanetary breeze gave astronomers the first hint of its…
Martian Dust Devil Trails
Who's been marking up Mars? This portion of a recent high-resolution picture from the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft shows twisting dark trails criss-crossing a…
NEAR Shoemaker Views Eros
Orbiting asteroid 433 Eros, 145 million miles from Earth, NASA's NEAR spacecraft has been returning stunning views as its year long mission of exploration gets underway . A mosaic…
Viewing discoveries from 8 April 2000 through 16 March 2000.