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.
Comet Siding Spring Passes Mars
Yesterday, a comet passed very close to Mars. In fact, Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) passed closer to the red planet than any comet has ever passed to Earth in recorded history.…
Comet McNaught Over New Zealand
Comet McNaught was perhaps the most photogenic comet of modern times -- from Earth. After making quite a show in the northern hemisphere in early January of 2007, the comet moved…
Melotte 15 in the Heart
Cosmic clouds form fantastic shapes in the central regions of emission nebula IC 1805. The clouds are sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from massive hot stars in the…
Messier 6 and Comet Siding Spring
This looks like a near miss but the greenish coma and tail of Comet Siding Spring (C/2013 A1) are really 2,000 light-years or so away from the stars of open cluster Messier 6 .…
Rosetta's Selfie
This Rosetta spacecraft selfie was snapped on October 7th. At the time the spacecraft was about 472 million kilometers from planet Earth , but only 16 kilometers from the surface…
Mysterious Changing feature on Titan
What is that changing object in a cold hydrocarbon sea of Titan? Radar images from the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn have been recording the surface of the…
Auroral Corona over Norway
Higher than the highest mountain lies the realm of the aurora. Auroras rarely reach below 60 kilometers, and can range up to 1000 kilometers. Aurora light results from energetic…
Sprite Lightning in Slow Motion
What causes sprite lightning? Mysterious bursts of light in the sky that momentarily resemble gigantic jellyfish have been recorded for over 25 years, but their root cause remains…
The Helix Nebula from Blanco and Hubble
How did a star create the Helix nebula ? The shapes of planetary nebula like the Helix are important because they likely hold clues to how stars like the Sun end their lives.…
Eclipse at Moonrise
As the Moon rose and the Sun set on October 8, a lunar eclipse was in progress seen from Chongqing, China . Trailing through this composite time exposure , the rising Moon began…
Moons at Opposition
From the early hours of October 8, over the Santa Cruz Mountains near Los Gatos, California, the totally eclipsed Moon shows a range of color across this well-exposed telescopic…
Eclipse at Moonset
The Pacific Ocean and Chilean coast lie below this sea of clouds. Seen through the subtle colors of the predawn sky a lunar eclipse is in progress above, the partially eclipsed…
NGC 6823: Cloud Sculpting Star Cluster
Star cluster NGC 6823 is slowly turning gas clouds into stars. The center of the open cluster, visible on the upper right, formed only about two million years ago and is dominated…
From the Temple of the Sun to the Temple of the Moon
What connects the Sun to the Moon? Many answers have been given throughout history , but in the case of today's featured image, it appears to be the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy…
Space Station Detector Finds Unexplained Positron Excess
Where did all these high energy positrons come from? The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) onboard the International Space Station (ISS) has been meticulously recording how…
A Total Lunar Eclipse Over Tajikistan
If the full Moon suddenly faded, what would you see? The answer during the total lunar eclipse of 2011 June was recorded in a dramatic time lapse video from Tajikistan. During a…
Mars, Antares, Moon and Saturn
Mars , Antares, Moon , and Saturn are the brightest celestial beacons in this serene sky . The Sun's golden light is still scattered along the southwestern horizon though,…
Aurora and Milky Way in a Little Sky
Stepping stones seem to lead to the Milky Way as it stretches across this little sky . Of course, the scene is really the northern hemisphere's autumnal equinox night. Water and…
The Bubble Nebula
Blown by the wind from a massive star, this interstellar apparition has a surprisingly familiar shape . Cataloged as NGC 7635, it is also known simply as The Bubble Nebula .…
The Butterfly Nebula from Hubble
The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often named for flowers or insects . Though its wingspan covers over 3 light-years, NGC 6302 is no exception. With…
A Full Circle Rainbow over Australia
Have you ever seen an entire rainbow? From the ground, typically, only the top portion of a rainbow is visible because directions toward the ground have fewer raindrops. From the…
Unusual Rocks near Pahrump Hills on Mars
How did these Martian rocks form? As the robotic Curiosity rover has approached Pahrump Hills on Mars , it has seen an interesting and textured landscape dotted by some unusual…
Two Black Holes Dancing in 3C 75
What's happening at the center of active galaxy 3C 75? The two bright sources at the center of this composite x-ray (blue)/ radio (pink) image are co-orbiting supermassive black…
A Launch and a Landing
Taken from an Atlantic beach, Cape Canaveral, planet Earth , four identically framed digital images are combined in this night skyscape. Slightly shifted short star trails dot the…
Viewing discoveries from 20 October 2014 through 27 September 2014.