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.
High Noon Analemma Over Azerbaijan
Is the Sun always straight up at noontime? No. For example, the Sun never appears directly overhead from locations well north or south of the Earth's equator. Conversely, there is…
Hale-Bopp: The Great Comet of 1997
Sixteen years ago, Comet Hale-Bopp rounded the Sun and offered a dazzling spectacle in planet Earth's night. This stunning view , recorded shortly after the comet's 1997…
Cometary Globules
Bright-rimmed, flowing shapes gather near the center of this rich starfield toward the boarders of the nautical southern constellations Pupis and Vela . Composed of interstellar…
NGC 891 Edge-on
This sharp cosmic portrait features NGC 891. The spiral galaxy spans about 100 thousand light-years and is seen almost exactly edge-on from our perspective. In fact, about 30…
M78: Stardust and Starlight
Interstellar dust clouds and bright nebulae abound in the fertile constellation of Orion . One of the brightest, M78 , is just left of center in this colorful telescopic view ,…
Arp 94
This telescopic snapshot records a cosmic moment in the tumultuous lives of large spiral galaxy NGC 3227 and smaller elliptical NGC 3226. Catching them in the middle of an ongoing…
The Bubble and M52
To the eye, this cosmic composition nicely balances the Bubble Nebula at the lower left with open star cluster M52 above it and to the right. The pair would be lopsided on other…
Comet ISON Approaches
How impressive will Comet ISON become? No one is sure, but unfortunately, as the comet approaches the inner Solar System, it is brightening more slowly than many early…
Hubble Remix: Active Galaxy NGC 1275
Active galaxy NGC 1275 is the central, dominant member of the large and relatively nearby Perseus Cluster of Galaxies . Wild-looking at visible wavelengths, the active galaxy is…
October Aurora in Prairie Skies
Wind and spaceweather are transformed in this haunting night skyscape . The prairie windmill and colorful auroral display were captured on October 1, from central South Dakota,…
The Densest Galaxy
The bright core and outer reaches of giant elliptical galaxy M60 (NGC 4649) loom large at the upper left of this sharp close-up from the Hubble Space Telescope. Some 54 million…
M106 Close Up
Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial wonder was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer…
All the Colors of the Sun
It is still not known why the Sun's light is missing some colors. Here are all the visible colors of the Sun , produced by passing the Sun's light through a prism -like device.…
Filaments of the Vela Supernova Remnant
The explosion is over but the consequences continue. About eleven thousand years ago a star in the constellation of Vela could be seen to explode , creating a strange point of…
Mysterious Green Patches on the Sky
What is it? Some surely natural phenomenon has appeared in a video that, so far, has defied clear identification. The above time-lapse video was made to record Perseid meteors…
The Fairy of Eagle Nebula
The dust sculptures of the Eagle Nebula are evaporating. As powerful starlight whittles away these cool cosmic mountains , the statuesque pillars that remain might be imagined as…
Equinox Earth
From a geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometers above the equator, Russian meteorological satellite Elektro-L takes high-resolution images of our fair planet every 30 minutes. But…
Andromeda on the Rocks
How far can you see? The Andromeda Galaxy 2.5 million light years away is the most distant object easily seen by the unaided eye. Other apparent denizens of the night sky, stars,…
M31 versus M33
Separated by about 14 degrees (28 Full Moons ) in planet Earth's sky, spiral galaxies M31, left, and M33 are both large members of the Local Group , along with our own Milky Way…
M81 versus M82
Here in the Milky Way galaxy we have astronomical front row seats as M81 and M82 face-off, a mere 12 million light-years away. Locked in a gravitational struggle for the past…
The Local Fluff
The stars are not alone. In the disk of our Milky Way Galaxy about 10 percent of visible matter is in the form of gas, called the interstellar medium (ISM). The ISM is not uniform…
IC 4628: The Prawn Nebula
South of Antares , in the tail of the nebula-rich constellation Scorpius, lies emission nebula IC 4628 . Nearby hot, massive stars, millions of years young, radiate the nebula…
Apollo's Analemma
Today, the Sun crosses the celestial equator heading south at 20:44 Universal Time. An equinox (equal night), this astronomical event marks the first day of autumn in the northern…
Antares Rocket Launch
The sky looks dark in this scene from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia. Captured on Wednesday, September 18, an Orbital…
Viewing discoveries from 14 October 2013 through 21 September 2013.