Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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A View from the Zone
Brilliant Venus and the central Milky Way rise in the early morning hours of March 1 in this sea and skyscape. The scene looks out from a beach at Sea Isle City, New Jersey, USA,…
NGC 1333 Stardust
NGC 1333 is seen in visible light as a reflection nebula , dominated by bluish hues characteristic of starlight reflected by dust. A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the…
Globules in the Running Chicken Nebula
The eggs from this chicken may form into stars. The above pictured emission nebula, cataloged as IC 2944 , is called the Running Chicken Nebula for the shape of its greater…
Sun and Prominence
Dramatic prominences can sometimes be seen looming just beyond the edge of the sun. Such was the case last week as a large prominence, visible above , highlighted a highly active…
Habitable Worlds
Is Earth the only known world that can support life? In an effort to find life-habitable worlds outside our Solar System , stars similar to our Sun are being monitored for slight…
Martian Sunset
What would it be like to see a sunset on Mars? To help find out, the robotic rover Spirit was deployed in 2005 to park and watch the Sun dip serenely below the distant lip of…
NGC 7331 and Beyond
Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 7331 is often touted as an analog to our own Milky Way . About 50 million light-years distant in the northern constellation Pegasus , NGC 7331 was…
Möbius Arch Moonrise
Only two days past full, February's moon shines through thin clouds, rising on the left in this fisheye night skyscape . The moonlight illuminates a weathered, rounded foreground…
Daytime Moon Meets Morning Star
Venus now appears as planet Earth's brilliant morning star standing above the eastern horizon before dawn. For most , the silvery celestial beacon rose in a close pairing with an…
Aurora over New Zealand
Sometimes the more you look at an image, the more you see. Such may be the case for this beautiful nighttime panorama taken last week in New Zealand . Visible right off, on the…
The Pleiades Deep and Dusty
The well known Pleiades star cluster is slowly destroying part of a passing cloud of gas and dust . The Pleiades is the brightest open cluster of stars on Earth's sky and can be…
The Cloudy Cores of Active Galaxies
What would it look like to travel to the center of an active galaxy? Most galactic centers are thought to house black holes millions of times more massive than our Sun. The spaces…
Cassini Spacecraft Crosses Saturn's Ring Plane
If this is Saturn, where are the rings? When Saturn's “appendages” disappeared in 1612, Galileo did not understand why. Later that century, it became understood that Saturn 's…
M44: The Beehive Cluster
A mere 600 light-years away, M44 is one of the closest star clusters to our solar system. Also known as the Praesepe or the Beehive cluster its stars are young though, about 600…
The Long Jet of the Lighthouse Nebula
The Lighthouse nebula was formed by the wind of a pulsar, a rapidly rotating, magnetized neutron star, as it speeds through the interstellar medium at over 1,000 kilometers per…
Comet Lovejoy over the Great Wall
Fading now as it returns to the outer solar system Comet Lovejoy (C/2013 R1) still graces planet Earth's sky, a delicate apparition in binoculars or small telescopes . The comet,…
A Rainbow Pileus Cloud over Zimbabwe
Yes, but how many dark clouds have a multicolored lining? Pictured, behind this darker cloud, is a pileus iridescent cloud , a group of water droplets that have a uniformly…
Crossing Dingo Gap on Mars
An important threshold on Mars has now been crossed. Landing in mid-2012, the Curiosity rover is searching for clues of whether life could ever have existed on the red planet .…
The Cosmic Web of the Tarantula Nebula
It is the largest and most complex star forming region in the entire galactic neighborhood. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud , a small satellite galaxy orbiting our Milky Way…
Inside the Eagle Nebula
From afar, the whole thing looks like an Eagle . A closer look at the Eagle Nebula , however, shows the bright region is actually a window into the center of a larger dark shell…
NGC 2359: Thor's Helmet
This helmet-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages is popularly called Thor's Helmet. Heroically sized even for a Norse god , Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years across.…
IC 1805: Light from the Heart
Sprawling across almost 200 light-years, emission nebula IC 1805 is a mix of glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds about 7,500 light-years away in the Perseus spiral arm…
Downtown Auriga
Rich in star clusters and nebulae, the ancient constellation of Auriga , the Charioteer, rides high in northern winter night skies. Spanning nearly 24 full moons (12 degrees) on…
Rocket, Meteor, and Milky Way over Thailand
Can the night sky appear both serene and surreal? Perhaps classifiable as serene in the above panoramic image taken last Friday are the faint lights of small towns glowing across…
Viewing discoveries from 7 March 2014 through 12 February 2014.