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.
Waterfall, Moonbow, and Aurora from Iceland
The longer you look at this image , the more you see. Perhaps your eye is first drawn to the picturesque waterfall called Skogarfoss visible on the image right. Just as prevalent,…
The Butterfly Nebula from Hubble
Few butterflies have a wingspan this big. The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often named for flowers or insects , and NGC 6302 is no exception. With…
Sunspot Castle
Each day can have a beautiful ending as the Sun sets below the western horizon. This week, the setting Sun added naked-eye sunspots to its finale, as enormous active regions…
In the Arms of M83
Big, bright, and beautiful, spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra . This cosmic close-up, a…
RCW 86: Historical Supernova Remnant
In 185 AD, Chinese astronomers recorded the appearance of a new star in the Nanmen asterism - a part of the sky identified with Alpha and Beta Centauri on modern star charts. The…
Asteroid 2005 YU55 Passes the Earth
Asteroid 2005 YU55 passed by the Earth yesterday, posing no danger. The space rock, estimated to be about 400 meters across, coasted by just inside the orbit of Earth's Moon.…
Jumping Sundogs Over Thunderclouds
What's happening above those clouds? In the past few years, videos have appeared on the web detailing an unusual but little known phenomenon: rapid light changes over clouds. Upon…
Star Forming Region S106
Massive star IRS 4 is beginning to spread its wings. Born only about 100,000 years ago, material streaming out from this newborn star has formed the nebula dubbed Sharpless 2-106…
Orange Sun Oozing
The Sun's surface keeps changing. The above movie shows how the Sun's surface oozes during a single hour. The Sun's photosphere has thousands of bumps called granules and usually…
GK Per: Nova of 1901
Early in the 20th century, GK Persei briefly became one of the brightest stars in planet Earth's sky, an event known as Nova Persei 1901. Documented in this modern day composite…
Edge-on NGC 3628
Sharp telescopic views of magnificent edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 3628 show a puffy galactic disk divided by dark dust lanes. The tantalizing scene puts many astronomers in mind of…
IC 59 and IC 63 in Cassiopeia
These bright rims and flowing shapes suggest to some melting ice cream on a cosmic scale. Looking toward the constellation Cassiopeia , the colorful (zoomable) skyscape features…
NGC 7380: The Wizard Nebula
What powers are being wielded in the Wizard Nebula? Gravitation strong enough to form stars, and stellar wind s and radiations powerful enough to create and dissolve towers of gas…
Hammer Versus Feather on the Moon
If you drop a hammer and a feather together, which reaches the ground first? On the Earth, it's the hammer, but is the reason only because of air resistance? Scientists even…
Ghost of the Cepheus Flare
Spooky shapes seem to haunt this starry expanse , drifting through the night in the royal constellation Cepheus . Of course, the shapes are cosmic dust clouds faintly visible in…
White Rock Fingers on Mars
What caused this unusual light rock formation on Mars? Intrigued by the possibility that they could be salt deposits left over as an ancient lakebed dried-up , detailed studies of…
Spiral Galaxy NGC 3370 from Hubble
Is this what our own Milky Way Galaxy looks like from far away? Similar in size and grand design to our home Galaxy (although without the central bar), spiral galaxy NGC 3370 lies…
October Skylights
As northern hemisphere nights grow longer, October is a good month for spotting auroras, or even other eerie apparitions after dark. And this week the night sky did not…
Young Suns of NGC 7129
Young suns still lie within dusty NGC 7129 , some 3,000 light-years away toward the royal constellation Cepheus . While these stars are at a relatively tender age, only a few…
In, Through, and Beyond Saturn's Rings
A fourth moon is visible on the above image if you look hard enough. First -- and farthest in the background -- is Titan , the largest moon of Saturn and one of the larger moons…
IC 1805: The Heart Nebula in HDR
What powers the Heart Nebula? The large emission nebula dubbed IC 1805 looks, in whole, like a human heart . The nebula glows brightly in red light emitted by its most prominent…
HH-222: The Waterfall Nebula
What created the Waterfall Nebula? No one knows. The structure seen in the region of NGC 1999 in the Great Orion Molecular Cloud complex is one of the more mysterious structures…
Jupiter's Clouds from New Horizons
The New Horizons spacecraft took some stunning images of Jupiter on its way out to Pluto. Famous for its Great Red Spot , Jupiter is also known for its regular, equatorial cloud…
Jupiter Near Opposition
On October 29 (UT) , Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet , will be at opposition, opposite the Sun in planet Earth's sky, shining brightly and rising as the Sun sets. That…
Viewing discoveries from 14 November 2011 through 22 October 2011.