Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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Titan Landscape
This color view from Titan gazes across a suddenly familiar but distant landscape on Saturn's largest moon . The scene was recorded by ESA's Huygens probe after a 2 1/2 hour…
Nebula Nova Cygni Turns On
Old photographs show no evidence of the above nebula. In 1992, a white dwarf star toward the constellation of Cygnus blew off its outer layers in a classical nova explosion: an…
Huygens Images Titan's Surface
After a seven year interplanetary voyage on board the the Cassini spacecraft, the European Space Agency's Huygens probe parachuted to a historic landing on Saturn's moon Titan on…
Descent to Titan
Today's descent to the surface of Titan by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe was the most distant landing ever by a spacecraft from Earth. At 10:13 UT (5:13am EST, 11:13…
Infrared Trifid
The Trifid Nebula, aka M20 , is easy to find with a small telescope, a well known stop in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius . But where visible light pictures show the…
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300
Big, beautiful, barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300 lies some 70 million light-years away on the banks of the constellation Eridanus . This Hubble Space Telescope composite view of the…
Machholz Meets the Pleiades
Sweeping northward in planet Earth's sky, comet Machholz extended its long ion tail with the Pleiades star cluster in the background on January 7th. This stunning view , recorded…
Dust Sculptures in the Rosette Nebula
What creates the cosmic dust sculptures in the Rosette Nebula? Noted for the common beauty of its overall shape , parts of the Rosette Nebula , also known as NGC 2244, show beauty…
Jupiter's Rings Revealed
Why does Jupiter have rings? Jupiter's rings were discovered in 1979 by the passing Voyager 1 spacecraft , but their origin was a mystery. Data from the Galileo spacecraft that…
X-Ray Mystery in RCW 38
A mere 6,000 light-years distant and sailing through the constellation Vela , star cluster RCW 38 is full of powerful stars. It's no surprise that these stars, only a million…
S is for Venus
Planet Venus traced out this S shape in Earth's sky during 2004. Following the second planet from the Sun in a series of 29 images recorded from April 3rd through August 7th (top…
UKIRT: Aloha Orion
At the edge of a dense molecular cloud , filaments of gas, cosmic dust, and a multitude of young stars beckon in this penetrating image of the Orion Nebula . Alluring structures…
Comet Machholz in View
Good views of Comet Machholz are in store for northern hemisphere comet watchers in January. Now making its closest approach to planet Earth, the comet will pass near the lovely…
Milky Way Illustrated
What does our Milky Way Galaxy look like from afar? Since we are stuck inside, and since opaque dust truncates our view in visible light , nobody knows for sure. Drawn above ,…
The Pleiades Star Cluster
Perhaps 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…
Welcome to Planet Earth
Welcome to Planet Earth , the third planet from a star named the Sun . The Earth is shaped like a sphere and composed mostly of rock . Over 70 percent of the Earth's surface is…
Manicouagan Impact Crater
Manicouagan Crater in northern Canada is one of the oldest impact craters known . Formed about 200 million years ago, the present day terrain supports a 70-kilometer diameter…
A Year of Mars Roving
Landing on Mars in January, NASA's twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity have now each spent over 330 sols roving the martian surface . Still healthy and well in to extended…
M81 and M82: GALEX Full Field
Intriguing galaxy pair M81 and M82 shine in this full-field view from the orbiting GALEX observatory. GALEX - the Galaxy Evolution Explorer - scans the cosmos in ultraviolet light…
The Helix Nebula from Blanco and Hubble
How did a star create the Helix nebula? The shapes of planetary nebula like the Helix are important because they likely hold clues to how stars like the Sun end their lives.…
Tentacles of the Tarantula Nebula
The Tarantula Nebula is a giant emission nebula within our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud . Inside this cosmic arachnid lies a huge central young cluster of massive…
Andromeda's Core
The center of the Andromeda galaxy is beautiful but strange. Andromeda , indexed as M31, is so close to our own Milky Way Galaxy that it gives a unique perspective into galaxy…
GRO J1655-40: Evidence for a Spinning Black Hole
In the center of a swirling whirlpool of hot gas is likely a beast that has never been seen directly: a black hole . Studies of the bright light emitted by the swirling gas…
Big Beautiful Saturn
As a present to APOD readers, digital imager Mattias Malmer offers a very high resolution view of big beautiful Saturn. A labor of love, his full mosaic, composite image is…
Viewing discoveries from 17 January 2005 through 25 December 2004.