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.
Meteor and Moonbow over Wallaman Falls
Which feature takes your breath away first in this encompassing panorama of land and sky? The competition is strong with a waterfall, meteor, starfield, and even a moonbow all…
Baily's Beads near Solar Eclipse Totality
Just before the Sun blacks out, something strange occurs. As the Moon moves to completely cover the Sun in a total solar eclipse -- like the one set to occur over parts of…
Polar Ring Galaxy NGC 660
NGC 660 is featured in this cosmic snapshot , a sharp composite of broad and narrow band filter image data from the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea . Over 20 million…
Melotte 15 in the Heart
Cosmic clouds seem to form fantastic shapes in the central regions of emission nebula IC 1805. Of course, the clouds are sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from massive hot…
Arp 188 and the Tadpole's Tail
In this stunning vista , based on image data from the Hubble Legacy Archive, distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The…
Superstorm Sandy From Formation to Landfall
It was the largest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean. The cost of its devastation is still unknown. Pictured above is a movie of Superstorm Sandy taken by the…
Methone: Smooth Egg Moon of Saturn
Why is this moon shaped like a smooth egg? The robotic Cassini spacecraft completed the first flyby ever of Saturn's small moon Methone in May and discovered that the moon has no…
Saturn's Moon Dione in Slight Color
Why does one half of Dione have more craters than the other? Start with the fact that Saturn 's moon Dione has one side that always faces Saturn, and one side that always faces…
Lenticular Clouds Over Washington
Are those UFOs near that mountain? No -- they are multilayered lenticular clouds . Moist air forced to flow upward around mountain tops can create lenticular clouds . Water…
Hunter's Moon over the Alps
A Full Moonset can be a dramatic celestial sight, and Full Moons can have many names. Late October's Full Moon, the second Full Moon after the northern hemisphere autumnal…
The Black Hole in the Milky Way
At the center of our Milky Way Galaxy , a mere 27,000 light-years away, lies a black hole with 4 million times the mass of the Sun. Fondly known as Sagittarius A (pronounced…
Rigel and the Witch Head Nebula
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble -- maybe Macbeth should have consulted the Witch Head Nebula. The suggestively shaped reflection nebula is…
VdB 152: A Ghost in Cepheus
Described as a “dusty curtain” or “ ghostly apparition”, mysterious reflection nebula VdB 152 really is very faint. Far from your neighborhood on this Halloween Night , the cosmic…
Planetary Nebula PK 164 +31.1
Is this what will become of our Sun? Quite possibly. The bubble of expanding gas pictured above is the planetary nebula PK 164 +31.1, the remnants of the atmosphere of a Sun-like…
The Red Spider Planetary Nebula
Oh what a tangled web a planetary nebula can weave. The Red Spider Planetary Nebula shows the complex structure that can result when a normal star ejects its outer gases and…
Phobos: Doomed Moon of Mars
This moon is doomed. Mars , the red planet named for the Roman god of war , has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos , whose names are derived from the Greek for Fear and Panic .…
A Halo for NGC 6164
Beautiful emission nebula NGC 6164 was created by a rare, hot, luminous O-type star, some 40 times as massive as the Sun. Seen at the center of the cosmic cloud, the star is a…
Reflection Nebula vdB1
Every book has a first page and every catalog a first entry. And so this lovely blue cosmic cloud begins the van den Bergh Catalog (vdB) of stars surrounded by reflection nebulae.…
The Medusa Nebula
Braided, serpentine filaments of glowing gas suggest this nebula's popular name, The Medusa Nebula. Also known as Abell 21, this Medusa is an old planetary nebula some 1,500…
NGC 206 and the Star Clouds of Andromeda
The large stellar association cataloged as NGC 206 is nestled within the dusty arms of neighboring spiral galaxy Andromeda (M31), 2.5 million light-years distant. Seen near the…
Mammatus Clouds Over Saskatchewan
Normal cloud bottoms are flat . This is because moist warm air that rises and cools will condense into water droplets at a specific temperature, which usually corresponds to a…
A Space Shuttle on the Streets of Los Angeles
Was that the space shuttle that just went by? Garnering attention that could make even a movie star blush, thousands of people watched in awe as a quintessential icon of the space…
The Horsehead Nebula
One of the most identifiable nebulae in the sky, the Horsehead Nebula in Orion , is part of a large, dark, molecular cloud . Also known as Barnard 33, the unusual shape was first…
Zodiacal Light and Milky Way
Ghostly apparitions of two fundamental planes in planet Earth's sky span this October all-sky view. The scene was captured from a lakeside campsite under dark skies in northern…
Viewing discoveries from 12 November 2012 through 20 October 2012.