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.
Planets, Endeavour at Dawn
When dawn broke over Kennedy Space Center on Monday, May 16, the space shuttle orbiter Endeavour still stood on pad 39A. Its final launch, on mission STS-134 to the International…
A Journey Through the Night Sky
Majestic nebulae and stars of our Milky Way Galaxy stretch across this panoramic image of the entire night sky. At full resolution, the 5 gigapixel mosaic was stitched together…
NGC 253: Close Up
This dusty island universe is one of the brightest spiral galaxies in planet Earth's sky . Seen nearly edge-on, NGC 253 is only 13 million light-years away, the largest member of…
The Last Launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour
Two days ago, powerful yet controlled explosions rocketed the Space Shuttle Endeavour on its final trip into Earth orbit. The above image was taken seconds after liftoff as the…
A Starry Night of Iceland
On some nights, the sky is the best show in town. On this night, the sky was not only the best show in town, but a composite image of the sky won an international competition for…
Time Lapse Clouds and Sky Over the Canary Islands
If you could sit back and watch clouds and the sky move all night and day, what might you see? One answer from the island of Tenerife, captured over the course of the year,…
The Sombrero Galaxy from Hubble
What's going on in the center of this spiral galaxy? Named the Sombrero Galaxy for its hat-like resemblance, M104 features a prominent dust lane and a bright halo of stars and…
The Little Dipper
At 2nd magnitude, Polaris is far from the brightest star in the night sky. But it is the brightest star at the left of this well-composed, starry mosaic spanning about 23 degrees…
A Beautiful Trifid
The beautiful Trifid Nebula is a cosmic study in colorful contrasts. Also known as M20, it lies about 5,000 light-years away toward the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. A…
Enceladus Looms
A sunlit crescent of Saturn's moon Enceladus looms above the night side of Saturn in this dramatic image from the Cassini spacecraft . Captured on August 13, 2010 looking in a…
The Southern Cliff in the Lagoon
Undulating bright ridges and dusty clouds cross this close-up of the nearby star forming region M8 , also known as the Lagoon Nebula . A sharp, false-color composite of narrow…
Gravity Probe B Confirms the Existence of Gravitomagnetism
Does gravity have a magnetic counterpart? Spin any electric charge and you get a magnetic field. Spin any mass and, according to Einstein, you should get a very slight effect that…
Wonder and Mystery above the Very Large Telescopes
What's that bright orange dot above the large telescope on the right? Even seasoned sky enthusiasts might ponder the origin of the orange orb seen by scrolling across this…
Shadow of a Martian Robot
What if you saw your shadow on Mars and it wasn't human ? Then you might be the Opportunity rover currently exploring Mars. Opportunity and sister robot Spirit have been probing…
Dawn of the Planets
This month, four of the five naked-eye planets gather along the eastern horizon near dawn. The celestial grouping is seen here just before sunrise on May 5, from a beach near…
Farther Along
What is humanity's most distant spacecraft? Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 now holds that distinction at 17.5 billion kilometers from the Sun. That corresponds to 16 light-hours or…
50 Years Ago: Freedom 7 Flies
Fifty years ago, near the dawn of the space age , NASA controllers “lit the candle” and sent Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard arcing into space atop a Redstone rocket . His cramped…
Celestial Trails over Greece
If you watch the horizon at just the right place and at just the right time, you can witness some spectacular juxtapositions between Earth and sky. In the above video, stars, the…
Globular Cluster M15 from Hubble
Stars, like bees, swarm around the center of bright globular cluster M15. This ball of over 100,000 stars is a relic from the early years of our Galaxy , and continues to orbit…
Jupiter's Great Red Spot from Voyager 1
It is a hurricane twice the size of the Earth. It has been raging at least as long as telescopes could see it, and shows no signs of slowing. It is Jupiter's Great Red Spot , the…
Molecular Cloud Barnard 163
It may look to some like a duck, but it lays stars instead of eggs. In the center of the above image lies Barnard 163, a nebula of molecular gas and dust so thick that visible…
Tycho's Supernova Remnant
Tycho! Tycho! burning bright In the darkness of the night, What exploding white dwarf star Did frame thy remnant from afar, In the distant deep dark skies Under gaze of human…
The Antennae
Some 60 million light-years away in the southerly constellation Corvus , two large galaxies collided . But the stars in the two galaxies, cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 ,…
Scintillating
On June 4, 2010 Regulus, alpha star of the constellation Leo, and wandering planet Mars were at about the same apparent brightness, separated on the sky by 1.5 degrees. An…
Viewing discoveries from 21 May 2011 through 28 April 2011.