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.
Summer at the South Pole
The December solstice brings the beginning of Winter to Earth's Northern Hemisphere and Summer time to the South! This view of Earth's Southern Hemisphere near the beginning of…
Solstice Celebration
Aloha and Season's greetings! On December 22nd, at 01:14 Universal Time (December 21, 3:14pm Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time ), the Sun reaches its southernmost point in planet…
Colorful Clouds of Orion
Revisiting one of the most famous nebulae in planet Earth's night sky, astrophotographer Robert Gendler has constructed this stunning, color-enhanced mosaic of the region…
RAPTOR Images GRB 021211
On December 11 astronomers found one of the brightest and most distant explosions in the Universe - a gamma-ray burst - hiding in the glare of a relatively nearby star. The…
Io Volcano Culann Patera
What causes the unusual colors surrounding Io's volcanoes? Io , the innermost large moon of Jupiter , is known to be the most tumultuous body in the Solar System . Approximately…
Beefing Up the International Space Station
The International Space Station (ISS) will be the largest human-made object ever to orbit the Earth . The station is so large that it could not be launched all at once -- it is…
Night and Day in Melas Chasma on Mars
What types of terrain are found on Mars? Part of the answer comes from thermal imaging by the robot spacecraft 2001 Mars Odyssey currently orbiting Mars . The above picture is a…
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…
IC 418: The Spirograph Nebula
What is creating the strange texture of IC 418? Dubbed the Spirograph Nebula for its resemblance to drawings from a cyclical drawing tool , planetary nebula IC 418 shows patterns…
The Crown of the Sun
During a total solar eclipse, the Sun's extensive outer atmosphere or corona is an awesome and inspirational sight . Yet the subtle shades and shimmering features of the corona…
Apollo 17: Last on the Moon
In December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon, in the Taurus-Littrow valley , while colleague Ronald Evans orbited…
Meteors Between Stars and Clouds
Streaking high above diffuse clouds -- but well in front of distant stars -- are sand-sized bits of an ancient comet: meteors . These bits flaked off Comet Tempel-Tuttle during…
M17: Omega Nebula Star Factory
In the depths of the dark clouds of dust and molecular gas known as M17 , stars continue to form. The similarity to the Greek letter capital Omega gives the molecular cloud its…
Moon Shadow Moves Over Africa
When the Moon's shadow reached out and touched the Earth last week, the result was a solar eclipse . Such an eclipse is total only for observers located along a narrow path…
The International Space Station Expands Yet Again
The developing International Space Station (ISS) has changed its appearance yet again. Earlier this month the Space Shuttle Endeavor visited the ISS and installed the fourth of…
Jupiter, Io and Shadow
Pictured above is the innermost of Jupiter's Galilean satellites , Io, superposed in front of the gas giant planet. To the left of Io is a dark spot that is Io's own shadow. A…
Zimbabwe Solar Eclipse
Normally hiding from view in the glare of the Sun, the shy solar corona came out to play Wednesday as a total solar eclipse graced morning skies over southern Africa. This…
NGC 2359: Thor's Helmet
NGC 2359 is a striking emission nebula with an impressive popular name - Thor's Helmet. Sure, its suggestive winged appearance might lead some to refer to it as the “duck nebula”,…
Moon, Mars, Venus, and Spica
Gliding toward today's total eclipse of the Sun, the crescent Moon has been rising early, just before dawn. And as a prelude to its close solar alignment , the Moon also completed…
Eclipse Over Acacia
On December 4th , for the second time in as many years, the Moon's shadow will track across southern Africa bringing a total solar eclipse to African skies. Reaching Africa just…
Nearby Spiral M33
Spiral galaxy M33 is a mid-sized member of our Local Group of Galaxies . M33 is also called the Triangulum Galaxy for the constellation in which it resides. About four times…
The Pleiades Star Cluster
It is the most famous star cluster on the sky. The Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city . Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45…
Surveyor Hops
This panorama of the cratered lunar surface was constructed from images returned by the US Surveyor 6 lander. Surveyor 6 was not the first spacecraft to accomplish a soft landing…
Open Star Clusters M35 and NGC 2158
Open clusters of stars can be near or far, young or old, and diffuse or compact. Open clusters may contain from 100 to 10,000 stars, all of which formed at nearly the same time.…
Viewing discoveries from 22 December 2002 through 29 November 2002.