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.
Midnight's Solar Eclipse
On June 1, the shadow of the New Moon was cast across a land of the midnight Sun in this year's second partial solar eclipse . This picture of the geocentric celestial event above…
Endeavour's Starry Night
This luminous night view of the space shuttle orbiter Endeavour , docked with the International Space Station for a final time, was captured on May 28. Orbiting 350 kilometers…
Earth Rotating Under Very Large Telescopes
Why is the Earth moving in the above video? Most time lapse videos of the night sky show the stars and sky moving above a steady Earth. Here, however, the frames have been…
Jets from Unusual Galaxy Centaurus A
Jets of streaming plasma expelled by the central black hole of a massive spiral galaxy light up this composite image of Centaurus A . The jets emanating from Cen A are over a…
Last Panorama of the Spirit Rover on Mars
This is the last thing that the Spirit rover on Mars ever saw. Operating years beyond original expectations, Spirit eventually got mired in martian dirt and then ran out of power…
Comet Between Fireworks and Lightning
Sometimes the sky itself is the best show in town. In January 2007, people from Perth , Australia gathered on a local beach to watch a sky light up with delights near and far.…
The Mileage of Light
If you're driving down a dark road on a starry night, you might want to check the odometer. Earlier this month, when traveling astronomer Dennis Mammana did he was greeted with…
Messier Marathon
In this action scene , red night vision lights, green laser pointers, tripods and telescopes in faint silhouette surround intrepid sky gazers embarked on the 10th annual Iran…
Supernova Sonata
To create a sonata from supernovae, first you have to find the supernovae. To do that composers Alex Parker and Melissa Graham relied on the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT)…
Space Shuttle Rising
What's that rising from the clouds? The space shuttle. If you looked out the window of an airplane at just the right place and time last week, you could have seen something very…
Three Arches Above Utah
How many arches can you count in the above image? If you count both spans of the Double Arch in the Arches National Park in Utah , USA , then two. But since the above image was…
An Unexpected Flare from the Crab Nebula
Why does the Crab Nebula flare? No one is sure. The unusual behavior, discovered over the past few years, seems only to occur in very high energy light -- gamma rays . As recently…
Io: The Prometheus Plume
What's happening on Jupiter's moon Io? Two sulfurous eruptions are visible on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io in this color composite image from the robotic Galileo spacecraft that…
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…
Viewing discoveries from 3 June 2011 through 11 May 2011.