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.
M42: Wisps of the Orion Nebula
The Great Nebula in Orion , an immense, nearby starbirth region , is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas . Here, glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge…
The Car, the Hole, and the Peekskill Meteorite
The Peekskill meteor of 1992 was captured on 16 independent video s and then struck a car. Documented as brighter than the full Moon , the spectacular fireball crossed parts of…
Leonids and Leica
This lovely view from northern Spain at Cape Creus on the easternmost point of the Iberian peninsula , looks out across the Mediteranean and up into the stream of the 2002 Leonid…
Hand Drawn Transit
The sight of Mercury's tiny round disk drifting slowly across the face of the Sun inspired and entertained many denizens of planet Earth last week. In fact, artist and astronomer…
Children of the Sun
For a moment , planets Jupiter , Venus , Mars , and Mercury all posed near their parent star in this Sun-centered view, recorded on November 11. The picture, from a coronograph…
A Fog Bow Over California
Is that white arch real? What is being seen is a fogbow , a reflection of sunlight by water drops similar to a rainbow but without the colors. The fog itself is not confined to an…
Mercury's Transit: An Unusual Spot on the Sun
What's that dot on the Sun? If you look closely, it is almost perfectly round. The dot is the result of an unusual type of solar eclipse that occurred last week. Usually it is the…
A Hurricane Over the South Pole of Saturn
What's happening at the south pole of Saturn? To find out, scientists sent the robot Cassini probe now orbiting Saturn directly over the lower spin axis of the ringed giant.…
The Cat's Eye Nebula
Three thousand light-years away, a dying star throws off shells of glowing gas. This image from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals the Cat's Eye Nebula to be one of the most…
M51: Cosmic Whirlpool
Follow the handle of the Big Dipper away from the dipper's bowl, until you get to the handle's last bright star. Then, just slide your telescope a little south and west and you…
Mercury and the Chromosphere
Enjoying Wednesday's transit of Mercury from Dallas, Texas, astronomer Phil Jones recorded this detailed image of the Sun. Along with a silhouette of the innermost planet, a…
Halo and Hexagons
As a bright November Moon lit up the night sky last week, Gil Esquerdo spotted this lovely Moon halo overhead at the Whipple Observatory on Mt. Hopkins, Arizona. In the…
Simulated Transit of Mercury
Mercury, the solar system's innermost planet, will spend about five hours crossing in front of the Sun today - beginning at 1912 UT (2:12pm EST), November 8. Specially equipped…
Janus: Potato Shaped Moon of Saturn
Janus is one of the stranger moons of Saturn. First, Janus travels in an unusual orbit around Saturn where it periodically trades places with its sister moon Epimetheus , which…
The Ghostly Tail of Comet SWAN
What causes the structure in Comet SWAN's tail? Comet SWAN , which unexpectedly flared up to naked-eye brightness last week, has been showing detail in its ion tail that might be…
A Galaxy Collision in NGC 6745
Galaxies don't normally look like this. NGC 6745 actually shows the results of two galaxies that have been colliding for only hundreds of millions of years. Just off the above…
Paranal Moonset
Just before the rising Sun fully illuminated the 2,635 meter summit of Cerro Paranal in northern Chile, Gordon Gillet captured this stunning moonset. In the telephoto picture, a…
V838 Mon: Echoes from the Edge
Variable star V838 Monocerotis lies near the edge of our Milky Way Galaxy, about 20,000 light-years from the Sun. Still, ever since a sudden outburst was detected in January 2002,…
Messier 76
“Nebula at the right foot of Andromeda ... ” begins the description for the 76th object in Charles Messier's 18th century Catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters . In fact, M76 is…
McMurdo Panorama from Mars
This was Spirit's view on Martian-day 1,000 of its 90-Martian-day mission. The robotic Spirit rover has stayed alive so long on Mars that it needed a place to wait out the cold…
SH2 136: A Spooky Nebula
The dark nebula SH2-136 appears to be celebrating Halloween all of the time. The complex process of star formation create dust clouds of many shapes and sizes -- it is human…
Crescent Venus and Moon
There's something behind these clouds. Those faint graceful arcs, upon inspection, are actually far, far in the distance. They are the Earth's Moon and the planet Venus . Both the…
The Sun Puffs
Our Earth endures bursts of particles from the Sun. On 1997 April 7, at 10 am (EDT), ground monitors of the SOHO spacecraft , which continually monitors the Sun, noticed a weak…
Comet SWAN Outburst
Near its closest approach to planet Earth, comet SWAN (C/2006 M4) brightened unexpectedly earlier this week , becoming visible to naked-eye observers under dark night skies.…
Viewing discoveries from 20 November 2006 through 28 October 2006.