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.
A Happy Sky Over Los Angeles
Sunday, the sky seemed to smile over much of planet Earth. Visible the world over was an unusual superposition of our Moon and the planets Venus and Jupiter. Pictures taken at the…
International Space Station: Find the Astronaut
Where's the astronaut? Somewhere in this impressive array of International Space Station (ISS) hardware, astronaut Steve Bowen can be found upgrading and cleaning key parts of…
Massive Stars Resolved in the Carina Nebula
How massive can stars be? Big, hefty stars live short violent lives that can profoundly affect their environments. Isolating a massive star can be problematic, however, since what…
An Apollo 15 Panorama: Astronaut Exploring
What would it be like to explore the Moon? NASA's Apollo missions gave humans just this chance in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In particular, the Apollo 15 mission was…
Chilean Skyscape
Night skies over Chilean mountain top observatories can be dark and clear, with glorious cosmic vistas . In this recent example, the plane of our Milky Way galaxy stretches…
Probably a Planet for Beta Pic
A mere 50 light-years away, young star Beta Pictoris became one of the most important stars in the sky in the early 1980s. Satellite and ground-based telescopic observations…
Galaxies in the River
Large galaxies grow by eating small ones. Even our own galaxy practices galactic cannibalism , absorbing small galaxies that get too close and are captured by the Milky Way's…
The Horsehead Nebula in Orion
One of the most identifiable nebulae in the sky, the Horsehead Nebula in Orion , is part of a large, dark, molecular cloud . Also known as Barnard 33, the unusual shape was first…
Fireball Over Edmonton
What if you're driving down the street and an object from space shoots across the sky right in front of you? Such was the case last week for many people in south central Canada.…
Radar Indicates Buried Glaciers on Mars
What created this unusual terrain on Mars? The floors of several mid-latitude craters in Hellas Basin on Mars appear unusually grooved, flat, and shallow. New radar images from…
In the Vicinity of the Cone Nebula
Strange shapes and textures can be found in neighborhood of the Cone Nebula . The unusual shapes originate from fine interstellar dust reacting in complex ways with the energetic…
From Moonrise to Sunset
In this panorama of Earth and sky recorded on Thursday, November 13, the Full Moon rises along the eastern horizon at the far left. Of course, the Full Moon rises at sunset and…
M76 Above and Below
Also known by the popular name the “Little Dumbbell Nebula”, M76 is one of the fainter objects listed in Charles Messier's 18th century Catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters . Like…
Endeavour in the Moon
Glaring near the top of the frame, the shuttle orbiter Endeavour rockets into the night on the STS-126 mission. Endeavour left planet Earth on November 14 from Launch Pad 39A at…
Unusual Auroras Over Saturn's North Pole
What's causing this unusual aurora over Saturn? No one is sure. Infrared images by the robotic Cassini spacecraft of the north pole of Saturn have uncovered aurora unlike any…
Restored: First Image of the Earth from the Moon
Pictured above is the first image ever taken of the Earth from the Moon. The image was taken in 1966 by Lunar Orbiter 1 and heralded by then-journalists as the Image of the…
HR 8799: Discovery of a Multi-planet Star System
How common are planetary systems like our own Solar System? In the twelve years previous to 2008, over 300 candidate planetary systems have been found orbiting nearby stars. None,…
Anticrepuscular Rays Over Colorado
What's happening over the horizon? Although the scene may appear somehow supernatural , nothing more unusual is occurring than a setting Sun and some well placed clouds. Pictured…
Arp 273
The two prominent stars in the foreground of this colorful skyscape are well within our own Milky Way Galaxy . Their spiky appearance is due to diffraction in the astronomer's…
Fomalhaut b
Fomalhaut ( sounds like “foam-a-lot”) is a bright, young, star, a short 25 light-years from planet Earth in the direction of the constellation Piscis Austrinus . In this sharp…
A Bubble in Cygnus
Adrift in the rich star fields of the constellation Cygnus, this lovely, symmetric bubble nebula was only recently recognized and may not yet appear in astronomical catalogs. In…
Phoenix and the Holy Cow
The northern Martian summer is waning. As predicted, a decline in daylight hours, deteriorating weather, and dust storms are preventing solar arrays on the Phoenix Mars Lander…
The Cosmic Web of the Tarantula Nebula
First cataloged as a star, 30 Doradus is actually an immense star forming region in nearby galaxy The Large Magellanic Cloud . The region's spidery appearance is responsible for…
Our Galaxy's Central Molecular Zone
The central region of our Milky Way Galaxy is a mysterious and complex place. Pictured here in radio and infrared light, the galaxy's central square degree is highlighted in fine…
Viewing discoveries from 3 December 2008 through 10 November 2008.