Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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Jaipur Observatory Sundial
Walk through these doors and up the stairs to begin your journey along a line from Jaipur, India toward the North Celestial Pole . Such cosmic alignments abound in marvelous…
Startling Star V838 Mon
Variable star V838 Monocerotis startled astronomers in January of 2002, undergoing a dramatic outburst like no other variable star known. Followed closely by ground-based…
New Horizons at Jupiter
Headed for the first close-up exploration of the Pluto-Charon system and the icy denizens of the Kuiper belt , NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is pictured here in an artist's…
Moonrise Through Mauna Kea's Shadow
How can the Moon rise through a mountain? It cannot -- what was photographed here is a moonrise through the shadow of a large volcano . The volcano is Mauna Kea , Hawai'i , USA ,…
NGC 869 & NGC 884: A Double Open Cluster
Most star clusters are singularly impressive. Open clusters NGC 869 and NGC 884, however, are doubly impressive. Also known as “h and chi Persei”, this unusual double cluster ,…
A Lenticular Cloud Over Hawai'i
Can a cloud do that? Actually, pictured above are several clouds all stacked up into one striking lenticular cloud . Normally, air moves much more horizontally than it does…
A Venus Landing
This image is part of the first color panoramic view from Venus . A TV camera on the Soviet Venera 13 lander that parachuted to the surface on 1982 March 1 transmitted it. Venus'…
Phobos Over Mars
Hurtling through space a mere 3,000 miles above the Martian surface , the diminutive moon Phobos (below and left of center) was imaged against the backdrop of a large shield…
The Most Distant X-Ray Jet
A false-color x-ray image inset at upper left reveals emission from a cosmic jet of high-energy particles, 100,000 light-years in length, emerging from quasar GB1508+5714 . An…
The Long Shadow of the Moon
The long shadow of the Moon fell across the continent of Antarctica on November 23rd , during the second solar eclipse of 2003. In this view from orbit, based on data from the…
The Turbulent Neighborhood of Eta Carina
How do violent stars affect their surroundings? To help find out, astronomers pointed the Hubble Space Telescope to the regions surrounding Eta Carina , a star showing signs that…
A Late Leonid from a Sparse Shower
The 2003 Leonids Meteor Shower contained relatively few meteors. As expected and unlike the last few years , the Earth just did not pass through any dense particle streams left…
IC 405: The Flaming Star Nebula
Rippling dust and gas lanes give the Flaming Star Nebula its name. The red and purple colors of the nebula are present in different regions and are created by different processes.…
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…
Moon AND Sun
This composite image was made from 22 separate pictures of the Moon and Sun all taken from Chisamba, Zambia during the total phase of the 2001 June 21 solar eclipse . The multiple…
Sunset Moonlight
November's lunar eclipse was one of the shortest in recent years and also one of the brightest -- demonstrating that the Earth's shadow is not completely dark. The eclipsed Moon…
Voyager at 90 AU
Launched in 1977 , Voyager 1 is now about 12 light-hours or 90 astronomical units ( AU ) from the Sun, making this spacecraft humanity's most distant ambassador to the cosmos.…
Light Can Twist as Well as Spin
Light is more complicated than we thought. When astronomers measure light , they are usually concerned with its direction, energy, and spin polarization (sometimes). Recently,…
Leonids Over Indian Cove
One year ago today an impressive meteor shower graced the skies of Earth. Pictured above from last year, at least six bright meteors are visible in only part of the sky above…
Canis Major Dwarf: A New Closest Galaxy
What is the closest galaxy to the Milky Way? The new answer to this old question is the Canis Major dwarf galaxy . For many years astronomers thought the Large Magellan Cloud…
Leonids from Leo
Is Leo leaking? Leo , the famous sky constellation visible on the left of the above all-sky photograph , appears to be the source of all the meteors seen in 1998's Leonids Meteor…
LL Orionis: When Cosmic Winds Collide
This arcing, graceful structure is actually a bow shock about half a light-year across, created as the wind from young star LL Orionis collides with the Orion Nebula flow. Adrift…
Jupiter Portrait
Every day is a cloudy day on Jupiter , the Solar System's reigning gas giant. And swirling cloud tops are all you see in this stunningly detailed true color image, a portion of a…
Aurora Oklahoma
Nestled in the central US, the state of Oklahoma is noted for its gorgeous prairie skies and wide-open spaces, but not for frequent visitations of the northern lights . Still,…
Viewing discoveries from 6 December 2003 through 13 November 2003.