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.
Castle and Full Moon
Clouds couldn't hide this bright Full Moon as it rose last week over the medieval castle of Tourrette-Levens near Nice, France. Exactly full on April 9 at 1456 UT, it followed the…
Jagged Shadows May Indicate Saturn Ring Particles
What's causing unusual jagged shadows on Saturn's rings? No one is yet sure. As Saturn nears equinox , its rings increasingly show only their thin edge to the Earth and Sun. As a…
M101: The Pinwheel Galaxy
Why do many galaxies appear as spirals ? A striking example is M101 , shown above , whose relatively close distance of about 27 million light years allows it to be studied in some…
Star Trails over the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope
Just fix your camera to a tripod and you too can make an image of graceful trails traced by the stars as planet Earth rotates on its axis. Making a time lapse video like that…
M39: Open Cluster in Cygnus
Lying just at the limit of human perception is a picturesque starfield containing one of the larger open clusters on the northern sky. Spanning an angle larger than the Moon ,…
The Big Picture
Intricate, glowing nebulae that shine in planet Earth's night sky are beautiful to look at in deep images made with telescopes and sensitive cameras. But they are faint and…
ISS and Astronaut
These two frames, taken with a video camera and a telescope, reveal remarkable details of the International Space Station (ISS) orbiting some 350 kilometers above planet Earth .…
Venus Near Inferior Conjunction
This remarkable picture of a slender crescent Venus was made during daylight hours on March 26. Venus was then very near inferior conjunction , its closest approach to a point on…
Unusual Dusty Galaxy NGC 7049
How was this unusual looking galaxy created? No one is sure, especially since spiral galaxy NGC 7049 looks so strange. NGC 7049's striking appearance is primarily due to an…
The Colliding Spiral Galaxies of Arp 274
Two galaxies are squaring off in Virgo and here are the latest pictures. When two galaxies collide , the stars that compose them usually do not. This is because galaxies are…
International Space Station Expands Again
The developing International Space Station (ISS) has changed its appearance again. In a recently completed mission, the Space Shuttle orbiter Discovery visited the ISS and added…
Orange Sun Oozing
The Sun's surface keeps changing. Click the central arrow and watch how the Sun's surface oozes during a single hour. The Sun's photosphere has thousands of bumps called granules…
Star Party on Planet Earth
As twilight sweeps around planet Earth tonight (April 4), many amateur astronomers will set up their telescopes for a 24-hour global star party. The planetwide star party is part…
Around the World in 80 Telescopes
Want to go on an extraordinary voyage? Today you can, by watching Around the World in 80 Telescopes . The 24-hour long webcast is organized by the European Southern Observatory…
100 Hours of Astronomy Begins
Today, 100 Hours of Astronomy begins, a cornerstone project of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 celebrating the 400th anniversary of Galileo's original telescopic…
Astronaut's Head Upgraded During Spacewalk
First, a new truss was added. Then, new solar panels were installed. Now, as part of the planned upgrade of the International Space Station , an Expedition 18 astronaut has…
In the Heart of the Tarantula Nebula
In the heart of monstrous Tarantula Nebula lies huge bubbles of energetic gas, long filaments of dark dust, and unusually massive stars. In the center of this heart, is a knot of…
Possible Mud Volcanoes on Mars
Is this a mud volcano on Mars? If so, could it be dredging up martian microbes? This strange possibility has been suggested recently and seems to fit several recent observations…
Signals of a Strange Universe
Eleven years ago results were first presented indicating that most of the energy in our universe is not in stars or galaxies but is tied to space itself. In the language of…
Almahata Sitta 15
Small asteroid 2008 TC3 fell to Earth at dawn on October 7, 2008, tracking through the skies over the Nubian Desert in northern Sudan. That event was remarkable because it was the…
The Seagull Nebula
Images from two different cameras, a digital SLR and an astronomical CCD camera, are combined in this color starscape. Both cameras made use of the same telescope at the oceanside…
Stars Young and Old
Galactic or open star clusters are relatively young. These swarms of stars are born near the plane of the Milky Way, but their numbers steadily dwindle as cluster members are…
Orcus of the Outer Solar System
A newly discovered object in the outer Solar System moves like an anti-Pluto. 90482 Orcus was first discovered in 2004 and is slightly smaller than Pluto , although still one of…
Martian Dunes and the Shadow of Opportunity
Human made robots continue to roll across the surface of Mars. Both Opportunity and its sister rover Spirit are in their sixth year on Mars , exploring the red planet for years…
Viewing discoveries from 16 April 2009 through 24 March 2009.