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.
NGC 6384: Spiral Beyond the Stars
The universe is filled with galaxies . But to see them astronomers must look out beyond the stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way . This colorful Hubble Space Telescopic portrait…
Globular Star Cluster NGC 6752
Some 13,000 light-years away toward the southern constellation Pavo, the globular star cluster NGC 6752 roams the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Over 10 billion years old, NGC 6752…
M82: Starburst Galaxy with a Superwind
Also known as the Cigar Galaxy for its elongated visual appearance, M82 is a starburst galaxy with a superwind. In fact , through ensuing supernova explosions and powerful winds…
Stars and Lightning Over Greece
It may appear, at first, like the Galaxy is producing the lightning, but really it's the Earth. In the foreground of the above picturesque nighttime landscape is the Greek Island…
Circling a Black Hole at its Photon Sphere
What would it look like to go right up to a black hole? One particularly interesting place near a black hole is its photon sphere, where photons can orbit in circles, a sphere 50…
Orbiting a Black Hole
What would it look like to orbit a black hole? Since the strong gravity of the black hole can significantly alter light paths, conditions would indeed look strange. For one thing,…
Saturn's Hyperion: A Moon with Odd Craters
What lies at the bottom of Hyperion 's strange craters? Nobody's sure . To help find out, the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn swooped past the sponge-textured moon in…
PanSTARRS: The Anti Tail Comet
Once known as Earth's sunset comet , PanSTARRS (C/2011 L4) is up all night now, but only for northern hemisphere skygazers. Telescopes are required to track its progress as it…
A Super Moon's Halo
A Full Perigee Moon rose as the Sun set last Sunday. At its closest to Earth it was, by just a bit, the year's brightest and largest Full Moon also known as a Super Moon . Seen…
Noctilucent Clouds over Moscow
This panoramic night scene from June 8 looks out across a Moscow skyline from atop the main building of Lomonosov Moscow State University. Shining in the darkened sky above are…
M31: The Andromeda Galaxy
Andromeda is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy . Our Galaxy is thought to look much like Andromeda . Together these two galaxies dominate the Local Group of…
Rock Nest Panorama from Curiosity on Mars
This is Mars -- have a look around. More specifically, this is one area picked for its promise of holding clues to the habitability of Mars to ancient life. To better search for…
The Porpoise Galaxy from Hubble
What's happening to this spiral galaxy? Just a few hundred million years ago, NGC 2936, the upper of the two large galaxies shown , was likely a normal spiral galaxy -- spinning,…
Venus' Once Molten Surface
If you could look across Venus with radar eyes, what might you see? This computer reconstruction of the surface of Venus was created from data from the Magellan spacecraft.…
Perigee's Full Moon
A big, bright, beautiful Full Moon will rise at sunset on Sunday. Its exact full phase (June 23, 11:32 UT) will occur shortly before it reaches perigee , the closest point to…
A Solstice Sunset Self Portrait
Today, the solstice is at 05:04 Universal Time , the Sun reaching the northernmost declination in its yearly journey through planet Earth's sky . A June solstice marks the…
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. Of course, this deep galactic portrait puts some…
Milky Way Over Crater Lake with Airglow
How many different astronomical phenomena have come together to create the above vista? Several. First, in the foreground, is Crater Lake -- a caldera created by volcanism on…
A Supercell Thunderstorm Over Texas
Is that a cloud or an alien spaceship? It's an unusual and sometimes dangerous type of thunderstorm cloud called a supercell. Supercells may spawn damaging tornados, hail,…
Dry Ice Sled Streaks on Mars
What creates these long and nearly straight grooves on Mars? Dubbed linear gullies , they appear on the sides of some sandy slopes during Martian spring, have nearly constant…
APOD Turns Eighteen
The first APOD appeared eighteen years ago today, on 1995 June 16. Although garnering only 14 pageviews on that day, we are proud to estimate that APOD has now served over one…
Delphinid Meteor Mystery
Over a five hour period last Tuesday morning, exposures captured this tantalizing view of meteor streaks and the Milky Way in dark skies above Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.…
Sharpless 115
Sharpless 115 stands just north and west of Deneb, the alpha star of Cygnus the Swan in planet Earth's skies . Noted in the 1959 catalog by astronomer Stewart Sharpless (as…
Four Planet Sunset
You can see four planets in this serene sunset image , created from a series of stacked digital exposures captured near dusk on May 25. The composite picture follows the trail of…
Viewing discoveries from 6 July 2013 through 13 June 2013.