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.
Inside the Eagle Nebula
From afar, the whole thing looks like an Eagle . A closer look at the Eagle Nebula , however, shows the bright region is actually a window into the center of a larger dark shell…
Surveyor Slides
“Safe!” In September 1967 , during regular season play , the Surveyor 5 lander actually slid several feet while making a successful soft landing on the Moon's Mare…
SOFIA's Mirror
The candy-dish appearance of this high-tech astronomical mirror is striking. Made of a special glass ceramic material called Zerodur , it actually measures 2.7 meters across. The…
Apogee Moon, Perigee Moon
Why don't these pieces fit? This third quarter Moon (left) and first quarter Moon were both photographed during the last lunar cycle or lunation with the same telescope and…
NGC 281: Cluster, Clouds, and Globules
NGC 281 is a busy workshop of star formation. Prominent features include a small open cluster of stars, a diffuse red-glowing emission nebula , large lanes of obscuring gas and…
Old Planetary Dust Disks Found by SST
Why are some older stars surrounded by dust? Observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope by a team led by George Rieke ( U. Arizona ) were expected to show that young stars, on…
Southern Saturn from Cassini
What happens to Saturn's pervasive clouds at its South Pole? Visible in the above image of Saturn are bright bands , dark belts and a dark spot right over the South Pole . The…
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 Bubbling Cauldron of NGC 3079
Edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 3079 is a mere 50 million light-years away toward the constellation Ursa Major. Shown in this stunning false-color Hubble Space Telescope image, the…
Night MAGIC
Is it magic ? On a rare foggy night, mysterious laser beams seem to play across the MAGIC telescope at Roque de los Muchachos on the Canary Island of La Palma . The lasers are…
Glimpse of a Globular Star Cluster
Not a glimpse of this cluster of stars can be seen in the inset visible light image (lower right). Still, the infrared view from the Spitzer Space Telescope reveals a massive…
Contrail Clutter over Georgia
Artificial clouds made by humans may become so common they change the Earth's climate. The long thin cloud streaks that dominate the above satellite photograph of Georgia are…
M3: Inconstant Star Cluster
Star clusters appear constant because photographs of them are frozen in time. In reality, though, cluster stars swarm the center and frequently fluctuate in brightness. Although…
Mosaic of Endurance Crater on Mars
Where should this Martian rover explore next? Possible choices for the Opportunity rover team on Earth in early August were to send the Martian robot inside Endurance crater…
Sunspot Loops in Ultraviolet
It was a quiet day on the Sun . The above image shows, however, that even during off days the Sun's surface is a busy place. Shown in ultraviolet light , the relatively cool dark…
The Averted Side Of The Moon
This vintage 60-kopek stamp celebrates a dramatic achievement. On the 7th of October, 1959 (7/X/1959), the Soviet interplanetary station which has come to be called “Luna 3”…
Kepler's SNR from Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer
Light from the stellar explosion that created this energized cosmic cloud was first seen on planet Earth in October 1604, a mere four hundred years ago . The supernova produced a…
Moon Lightning
Moonsets are not often quite as exciting as this one. But amateur astronomer Marc-Andre Besel was impressed by the brilliant lighting displays that joined the first quarter Moon…
N11: A Giant Ring of Emission Nebulas
How did this unusually large nebula form? One of the largest nebulas yet detected is actually a complex ring of emission nebulas connected by glowing filaments. The unusual…
SpaceShipOne Wins the X-Prize
Human space flight has entered the domain of private companies. Previously, large countries like the US and Russia have hired privately owned civilian companies to do specific…
NGC 6823: Cloud Sculpting Star Cluster
Star cluster NGC 6823 is ready for its close-up. The center of the open cluster, visible on the upper right, formed only about two million years ago and is dominated in brightness…
Comet Hale-Bopp and the North America Nebula
Comet Hale-Bopp 's 1997 encounter with the inner Solar System allowed many breath-taking pictures . Above , Comet Hale-Bopp was photographed crossing the constellation of Cygnus,…
Toutatis Nears Planet Earth
On Wednesday, September 29, asteroid Toutatis came within one million miles of Earth -- the closest predicted aproach of a sizable asteroid or comet to our fair planet in this…
Earth Nears Asteroid Toutatis
On Wednesday, September 29, the Earth came within one million miles of the asteroid Toutatis -- the closest predicted aproach of our fair planet to a sizable asteroid or comet in…
Viewing discoveries from 24 October 2004 through 1 October 2004.