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.
M74: The Perfect Spiral
If not perfect, then this spiral galaxy is at least one of the most photogenic. An island universe of about 100 billion stars, 30 million light-years away toward the constellation…
Eclipsed Moon and Stars
Half-shadowed by the Earth, the Moon takes on a remarkable appearance against a field of stars in this intriguing telephoto picture recorded during a partial phase of last week's…
Eclipsed Moon Montage
After watching this month's lunar eclipse, amateur astronomer Sebastien Gauthier carefully composed this montage of telescopic images of the Moon sliding through planet Earth's…
Copper Moon, Golden Gate
When the Moon rose over San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge on May 15, both bridge and Moon were in already in Earth's shadow . Of course, the bridge is in the Earth's shadow…
A Primordial Quasar
What did the first quasars look like? The nearest quasars are now known to be supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies . Gas and dust that falls toward a quasar glows…
The Andromeda Deep Field
What can you learn from looking into the depths of space? In an effort to find out true ages of stars in neighboring Andromeda galaxy 's halo , astronomers stared into the galaxy…
The Holographic Principle
Is this image worth a thousand words? According to the Holographic Principle , the most information you can get from this image is about 3 x 1065 bits for a normal sized computer…
Dark Sky, Bright Sun
In low Earth orbit there is not enough atmosphere to diffuse and scatter sunlight, so shadows are black and the sky is dark - even when the Sun shines. The harsh lighting produced…
A Tale of Two Nebulae
This colorful telescopic view towards the northern constellation Lyra reveals dim outer regions around M57, popularly known as the Ring Nebula . While modern astronomers still…
Moon Slide Slim
No special filters - or even a telescope - are required to enjoy a leisurely lunar eclipse . In fact, watched from all over the night side of planet Earth, these regular celestial…
The North Pole of Venus
If you could look down on the North Pole of Venus what would you see? The Magellan probe that orbited Venus from 1990 to 1994 was able to peer through the thick Venusian clouds…
Mercury Transits the Sun
How big is the Sun? The Sun is not only larger than any planet, it is larger than all of the planets put together. The Sun accounts for about 99.9 percent of all the mass in its…
In the Vicinity of the Cone Nebula
Strange shapes and textures can be found in neighborhood of the Cone Nebula . The unusual shapes originate from fine interstellar dust reacting in complex ways with the energetic…
M83: The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy from VLT
M83 is one of the closest and brightest spiral galaxies on the sky. Visible with binoculars in the constellation of Hydra , majestic spiral arms have prompted its nickname as the…
NGC 7293: The Helix Nebula
Will our Sun look like this one day? The Helix Nebula is the closest example of a planetary nebula created at the end of the life of a Sun-like star. The outer gasses of the star…
International Space Station in Transit
A stunning telescopic image of the International Space Station crossing in front of an eight day old Moon, this picture was captured on April 11th. But while Wednesday's leisurely…
Mercury Spotting
Can you spot the planet? The diminutive disk of Mercury, the solar system's innermost planet, spent about five hours crossing in front of the enormous solar disk yesterday…
The Southern Sky from the International Space Station
Look up from Earth's South Pole , and this stellar starscape is what you might see. Alternatively, this patch of sky is also visible from many southern locations as well as the…
A Chicago Meteorite Fall
If you wait long enough, a piece of outer space itself will come right to you. As Colby Navarro worked innocently on the computer , a rock from space crashed through the roof,…
NGC 1275: A Galactic Collision
In NGC 1275, one galaxy is slicing through another. The disk of the dust y spiral galaxy near the image center is cutting through a large elliptical galaxy , visible predominantly…
A Sonic Boom
Many people have heard a sonic boom, but few have seen one. When an airplane travels at a speed faster than sound, density waves of sound emitted by the plane cannot precede the…
Denizen of the Tarantula Nebula
The star cluster at lower right, cataloged as Hodge 301 , is a denizen of the Tarantula Nebula . An evocative nebula in the southern sky, the sprawling cosmic Tarantula is an…
Five to Mars
Come December 2003 - January 2004, an armada of five new invaders from Earth should arrive on the shores of the Red Planet -- the Japanese ( ISAS ) Nozomi orbiter, the European…
The Energetic Jet from Centaurus A
The center of well-studied active galaxy Centaurus A is hidden from the view of optical telescopes by a cosmic jumble of stars, gas, and dust. But both radio and x-ray telescopes…
Viewing discoveries from 24 May 2003 through 1 May 2003.