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.
Night-Shining Clouds
Alluring noctilucent or night-shining clouds lie near the edge of space, some 80 kilometers above Earth's surface. Of course, when viewed from space the clouds are more properly…
Red, White, and Blue Sky
Contrasting colors in this beautiful sunset sky were captured on June 30 from Clear Creek Canyon Observatory in central Arizona, USA. The twilight scene includes brilliant Venus…
At the Edge of Victoria Crater
We're going in. The robotic Opportunity rover currently rolling across Mars has been prowling around the edge of the largest crater it has visited since landing over three years…
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Zooming in to the Pelican Nebula
Where is the Pelican Nebula? APOD features many objects in the night sky , but usually does not have the resources to show where each one lies. Today, thanks to inventive digital…
Steep Cliffs on Mars
Vertical cliffs of nearly two kilometers occur near the North Pole of Mars. Also visible in the above image of the Martian North Polar Cap are red areas of rock and sand, white…
Jumbled Galaxy Centaurus A
At the center of this sharp skyscape , Centaurus A seems to be a fantastic jumble of old yellow stars, young blue star clusters, and imposing dark dust lanes. Spanning over 60,000…
Cat's Eye Wide and Deep
The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its more familiar outlines are seen in the brighter central region of this impressive…
A Visit from Atlantis
This remarkable image of the space shuttle orbiter Atlantis docked with the International Space Station ( ISS ) was taken at a range of 190 nautical miles . To record the fast…
Neon Saturn
If seen in the right light, Saturn glows like a neon sign. Although Saturn has comparatively little of the element neon , a composite image false-colored in three bands of…
Wisps of the Iris Nebula
Like delicate cosmic petals, these clouds of interstellar dust and gas have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile star fields of the constellation Cepheus . Sometimes…
The International Space Station Expands Again
The developing International Space Station (ISS) has changed its appearance again. During the past week, the Space Shuttle Atlantis visited the ISS and added pieces of the…
All the Colors of the Sun
It is still not known why the Sun's light is missing some colors. Shown above are all the visible colors of the Sun , produced by passing the Sun's light through a prism -like…
3D Barringer Meteorite Crater
Barringer Meteorite Crater , near Winslow, Arizona, is one of the best known impact craters on planet Earth . View this color stereo anaglyph with red/blue glasses to get a…
Small Worlds Ceres and Vesta
Ceres and Vesta are, respectively, only around 950 kilometers and 530 kilometers in diameter - about the size of Texas and Arizona. But they are two of the largest of over 100,000…
Stars and the Solstice Sun
If you could turn off the atmosphere's ability to scatter overwhelming sunlight, today's daytime sky might look something like this ... with the Sun surrounded by the stars of the…
A Daylight Eclipse of Venus
Something was about to happen. Just two days ago, two of the three celestial objects easily visible during the day appeared to collide. But actually, Earth's Moon passed well in…
Eris: More Massive than Pluto
Eris , a dwarf planet currently orbiting the Sun at about twice Pluto's distance, has been measured to have about 27 percent more mass than Pluto. The mass was calculated by…
Monitoring M2-9
Exploring the myriad shapes found in the cosmic zoo of planetary nebulae , some astronomers have focused on the intriguing example of M2-9. About 2,100 light-years away and over…
Analemma over Ukraine
If you took a picture of the Sun at the same time each day, would it remain in the same position? The answer is no, and the shape traced out by the Sun over the course of a year…
Lunar Orbiter Views Crater Copernicus
To prepare for the Apollo landings , five Lunar Orbiter spacecraft were launched during 1966 and 1967 to gather detailed images of our fair planet's large, natural satellite .…
Messier 96
Dust lanes seem to swirl around the core of Messier 96 in this colorful, detailed portrait of the beautiful island universe . Of course M96 is a spiral galaxy , and counting the…
vdB 152: Reflection Nebula in Cepheus
Described as a “dusty curtain” or “ghostly apparition”, mysterious reflection nebula vdB 152 really is very faint . It lies about 1400 light-years away, along the northern Milky…
Warped Sky: Star Trails Panorama
What's happened to the sky? A time warp, of sorts, and a digital space warp too. The time warp occurs because the above image captured in a single frame a four hour exposure of…
Shuttle Plume
What kind of cloud is that? Not a naturally occurring one. Pictured above is the drifting smoke plume left over from last Friday's launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis . The…
Viewing discoveries from 5 July 2007 through 12 June 2007.