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.
One-Armed Spiral Galaxy NGC 4725
While most spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way , have two or more spiral arms, peculiar galaxy NGC 4725 has only one. In this false-color Spitzer Space Telescope infrared…
Crepuscular Rays Over Utah
What could cause such rays of dark? Dark sky rays were caught in spectacular fashion earlier this month above Kanab, Utah , USA . The cause is something surprisingly familiar:…
Albireo: A Bright and Beautiful Double
Sometimes, even a small telescope can help unlock a hidden beauty of the heavens. Such is the case of the bright double star Albireo . Seen at even slight magnification, Albireo…
Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico
Where will Hurricane Katrina go? One of the stronger storm systems of modern times appears headed for landfall somewhere in the southern USA sometime today. Katrina was designated…
Muon Wobble Possible Door to Supersymmetric Universe
How fast do fundamental particles wobble? A surprising answer to this seemingly inconsequential question has come out of Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York , USA and may…
3D International Space Station
Get out your red-blue glasses and float next to the International Space Station (ISS), planet Earth's largest artificial moon. This breathtaking stereo view was constructed from…
Full Moon, Green Rim
July's Full Moon looks strangely darkened and distorted in this remarkable telescopic view . The image is one of a series recorded when the Moon was very near the horizon. The…
Barred Spiral Milky Way
A recent survey of stars conducted with the Spitzer Space Telescope is convincing astronomers that our Milky Way Galaxy is not just your ordinary spiral galaxy anymore. Looking…
Epimetheus: A Small Moon of Saturn
How did Epimetheus form? No one is yet sure. To help answer that question, this small moon has recently been imaged again in great detail by the robot spacecraft Cassini now…
NGC 281: The Pacman Nebula
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…
Desolate Mars: Rub al Khali
Sometimes on Mars , there is nothing to see but red sand. Traveling two kilometers south of Endurance Crater , the robotic rover Opportunity now exploring Mars stopped and took a…
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…
The Stars of NGC 300
Like grains of sand on a cosmic beach, individual stars of large spiral galaxy NGC 300 are resolved in this sharp image from the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for…
NGC 1 and NGC 2
Beautiful nebulae , clusters , and galaxies that grace planet Earth's night sky are often known by their New General Catalog designation or NGC number . That classic listing was…
Sylvia, Romulus and Remus
Discovered in 1866, main belt asteroid 87 Sylvia lies 3.5 AU from the Sun, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Also shown in recent years to be one in a growing list of double…
Planets over Paranal
Very bright planets and very large telescopes are part of this sunset view of Paranal Observatory . The observatory's four, massive 8.2 meter telescope units are situated on top…
The International Space Station from Orbit
The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest human-made object ever to orbit the Earth . Late last month and earlier this month, the station was visited and resupplied by…
Perseid Meteors and the Milky Way
Where will the next Perseid meteor appear? Sky enthusiasts who trekked outside for the Perseid meteor shower that peaked over the past few days typically had this question on…
Heating Coronal Loops
Why is the corona of the Sun so hot? Extending above the photosphere or visible surface of the Sun , the faint, tenuous solar corona can't be easily seen from Earth, but it is…
SNR 0103-72.6: Oxygen Supply
A supernova explosion, a massive star's inevitable and spectacular demise , blasts back into space debris enriched in the heavy elements forged in its stellar core . Incorporated…
A Meteor Shower Fireball Movie
Go outside tonight and see a celestial light show -- the later the better. Tonight is the peak of the month-long Perseid Meteor Shower . Although visible every year at this time,…
Young Suns of NGC 7129
Young suns still lie within dusty NGC 7129 , some 3,000 light-years away toward the royal constellation Cepheus . While these stars are at a relatively tender age, only about a…
The Heart and Soul Nebulas
Is the heart and soul of our Galaxy located in Cassiopeia ? Possibly not, but that is where two bright emission nebulas nicknamed Heart and Soul can be found. The Heart Nebula ,…
The Belt of Venus over Elwood Beach
Although you've surely seen it, you might not have noticed it. During a cloudless twilight , just before sunrise or after sunset , part of the atmosphere above the horizon appears…
Viewing discoveries from 1 September 2005 through 9 August 2005.