Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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To Fly Free in Space
At about 100 meters from the cargo bay of the space shuttle Challenger, Bruce McCandless II was farther out than anyone had ever been before. Guided by a Manned Maneuvering Unit…
Comet Lovejoy and the ISS
On December 24, Comet Lovejoy rose in dawn's twilight, arcing above the eastern horizon, its tails swept back by the solar wind and sunlight. Seen on the left is the comet's early…
The Diner at the Center of the Galaxy
The monster at the center of our Galaxy is about to get fed . Recent observations by the Very Large Telescopes indicate that a cloud of gas will venture too close to the…
Conjunction at Sunset
While Comet Lovejoy entertained early morning risers in the southern hemisphere , a lovely conjunction of a young crescent Moon and Venus graced western skies at sunset. Captured…
Comet Lovejoy over Paranal
Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3) survived its close encounter with the Sun earlier this month, taking its place among wonders of the southern skies just in time for Christmas. Seen here…
M27: The Dumbbell Nebula
The first hint of what will become of our Sun was discovered inadvertently in 1764 . At that time, Charles Messier was compiling a list of diffuse objects not to be confused with…
A Raging Storm System on Saturn
It is one of the largest and longest lived storms ever recorded in our Solar System. First seen late last year, the above cloud formation in the northern hemisphere of Saturn…
M1: The Crab Nebula from Hubble
This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula , the result of a supernova seen in 1054 AD , is filled with mysterious filaments. The filaments are not only…
Eclipsed Moon in the Morning
December's lunar eclipse graced early morning skies over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, USA. There, this wintry scene finds the Moon in a cold blue twilight sky near the western…
Shell Galaxy NGC 7600
Similar in size to the Milky Way, elliptical galaxy NGC 7600 is about 160 million light-years distant. In this deep image , spanning about 1/2 degree on the sky toward the…
Through a Sun Tunnel
Today the Sun stands still at 05:30 UT. Halting its steady march toward southern declinations and begining its annual journey north, the event is known as a solstice . In the…
A Horseshoe Einstein Ring from Hubble
What's large and blue and can wrap itself around an entire galaxy? A gravitational lens mirage. Pictured above , the gravity of a luminous red galaxy ( LRG ) has gravitationally…
NGC 253: The Sculptor Galaxy
NGC 253 is not only one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, it is also one of the dustiest . Discovered in 1783 by Caroline Herschel in the constellation of Sculptor , NGC…
A Geminid Meteor Over Iran
Some beautiful things begin as grains of sand. Locked in an oyster, a granule grows into an iridescent pearl , lustrous and lovely to behold. While hurtling through the atmosphere…
Hints of Higgs from the LargeHadronCollider
Why do objects have mass? To help find out, Europe 's CERN has built the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most powerful particle accelerator yet created by humans . Since 2008,…
Comet Lovejoy: Sungrazing Survivor
Like most other sungrazing comets, Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3) was not expected to survive its close encounter with the Sun . But it did. This image from a coronograph onboard the…
Red Moon Rising
This surreal, wintry scene is a composite picture recorded on December 10 as the Moon rose behind the Zagros Mountains of Iran. A total lunar eclipse was already in progress . The…
The Umbra of Earth
The dark, inner shadow of planet Earth is called the umbra . Shaped like a cone extending into space, it has a circular cross section most easily seen during a lunar eclipse . For…
A Lunar Eclipse Over an Indian Peace Pagoda
Our Moon turned red last week. The reason was that during December 10, a total lunar eclipse occurred. The above digitally superimposed image mosaic captured the Moon many times…
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…
An Unusual Vein of Deposited Rock on Mars
What could create this unusual vein of rock on Mars? A leading hypothesis is that this thin rock layer dubbed “Homestake” was deposited by a running liquid -- like most mineral…
Searching for Meteorites in Antarctica
Where is the best place on Earth to find meteorites ? Although meteors fall all over the world, they usually just sink to the bottom of an ocean , are buried by shifting terrain,…
Vesta Rocks
These colorful images are of thin slices of meteorites viewed through a polarizing microscope. Part of the group classified as HED (Howardite, Eucrite, Diogenite) meteorites for…
Eclipsed Moon in the Morning
Tomorrow, December 10 , the Full Moon will slide through planet Earth's shadow in a total lunar eclipse . The entire eclipse sequence , including 51 minutes of totality, will be…
Viewing discoveries from 1 January 2012 through 9 December 2011.