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.
Cosmic Tornado HH49/50
Light-years in length, this cosmic tornado is actually a powerful jet cataloged as HH (Herbig-Haro) 49/50 blasting down from the top of a Spitzer Space Telescope view . Though…
Star Factory Messier 17
Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, the star factory known as Messier 17 lies some 5,500 light-years away in the nebula-rich constellation Sagittarius . At that distance,…
Star Cluster Messier 67
Gathered at the center of this sharp skyview are the stars of Messier 67 , one of the oldest known open star clusters . In fact, though open star clusters are usually much…
Phoenix Rises Toward Mars
Can Mars sustain life? To help answer this question, last week NASA launched the Phoenix mission to Mars. In May 2008, Phoenix is expected to land in an unexplored north polar…
Old Faithful Below a Yellowstone Sky
You don't have to be at Yellowstone to see a sky this beautiful, but it helps. Only at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming , USA , would you see the picturesque foreground of the…
CG4: A Ruptured Cometary Globule
Can a gas cloud eat a galaxy? It's not even close. The odd looking “creature” or “hand” extending down from the top of the above photo is a gas cloud known as a cometary globule .…
The Dotted Dunes of Mars
What causes the black dots on dunes on Mars? As spring dawned on the Northern Hemisphere of Mars in 2004, dunes of sand near the poles begin to defrost. Thinner regions of ice…
Sagittarius Triplet
These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way . In fact, 18th century…
NGC 7293: The Helix Nebula
A mere seven hundred light years from Earth, in the constellation Aquarius , a sun-like star is dying. Its last few thousand years have produced the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), a…
M64: The Black Eye Galaxy
This bright, beautiful spiral galaxy is Messier 64 , sometimes known as the Black Eye Galaxy. M64 lies about 17 million light-years distant in the otherwise well-groomed northern…
Unusual Cratering on Saturn's Dione
Why does one half of Dione have more craters than the other? Start with the fact that Saturn 's moon Dione always has one side that faces Saturn, and always has one side that…
A Laser Strike at the Galactic Center
Why are these people shooting a powerful laser into the center of our Galaxy? Fortunately, this is not meant to be the first step in a Galactic war . Rather, astronomers at the…
The Four Suns of HD 98800
How would it look to have four suns in the sky? Planets of the HD 98800 system , if they exist, would experience such a view. HD 98800 is a multiple star system about 150 light…
The Center of Centaurus A
A fantastic jumble of young blue star clusters, gigantic glowing gas clouds, and imposing dark dust lanes surrounds the central region of the active galaxy Centaurus A. This…
Full Moondark
The brilliant full Moon might not look quite like this to skygazers next Monday, but the image is a mosaic of 18 digital frames recorded when the Moon was only about seven hours…
The Tidal Tail of NGC 3628
A mere 30 million light-years away, large spiral galaxy NGC 3628 (center) shares its neighborhood in the local Universe with two other large spirals, in a magnificent grouping…
Hot Stars in the Rosette Nebula
Winds and radiation from massive hot stars in the Rosette Nebula have cleared the natal gas and dust from the center of the nearby star-forming region. They also pose a danger to…
Global Dust Storms Threaten Mars Rovers
Will global dust storms terminate the robotic Martian rovers? Over the past month, windy dust storms have blocked much needed sunlight from reaching the solar panels of both the…
Spiral Galaxy M83: The Southern Pinwheel
M83 is one of the closest and brightest spiral galaxies on the sky. Visible with binoculars in the constellation of Hydra , majestic spiral arms have prompted its nickname as the…
Verona Rupes: Tallest Known Cliff in the Solar System
Could you survive a jump off the tallest cliff in the Solar System? Quite possibly. Verona Rupes on Uranus ' moon Miranda is estimated to be 20 kilometers deep -- ten times the…
The Flight of Helios
An example of solar-powered flight, NASA's Helios aircraft flew almost one hundred years after the Wright brothers' historic flight on December 17, 1903. Pictured here at 10,000…
Infrared Andromeda
This wide, detailed Spitzer Space Telescope view features infrared light from dust (red) and old stars (blue) in Andromeda, a massive spiral galaxy a mere 2.5 million light-years…
Apollo 11: East Crater Panorama
On July 20, 1969 , Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first to walk on the Moon . This panorama of their landing site sweeps across the…
The Hercules Cluster of Galaxies
These are galaxies of the Hercules Cluster , an archipelago of island universes a mere 500 million light-years away . Also known as Abell 2151, this cluster is loaded with gas and…
Viewing discoveries from 11 August 2007 through 19 July 2007.