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.
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, irradiate the nebula…
Whirlpool with Comets
Not a comet , bright spiral galaxy Messier 51 is popularly known as the Whirlpool Galaxy. Just off the handle of the Big Dipper in northern skies, you can spot it at the upper…
NGC 4696: Filaments around a Black Hole
What's happening at the center of elliptical galaxy NGC 4696? There, long tendrils of gas and dust have been imaged in great detail as shown by this recently released image from…
Aurora over Jupiter's South Pole from Juno
Why is there a glowing oval over Jupiter's South Pole? Aurora. Near the closest part of its first pass near Jupiter in August, NASA's robotic spacecraft Juno captured this…
Lightning over Colorado
Have you ever watched a lightning storm in awe? Join the crowd. Oddly, nobody knows exactly how lightning is produced. What is known is that charges slowly separate in some clouds…
Orion and Official Star Names
Familiar stars in Orion and constellations across the sky now have official names. Over the past year, the International Astronomical Union , the only body officially tasked with…
Galaxies in Pegasus
This wide, sharp telescopic view reveals galaxies scattered beyond the stars of the Milky Way at the northern boundary of the high-flying constellation Pegasus . Prominent at the…
A Triple Star is Born
A triple star system is forming, enshrouded within this dusty natal disk some 750 light-years away in the Perseus molecular cloud . Imaged at millimeter wavelengths by the Atacama…
Flaming Star Nebula
A runaway star lights the Flaming Star Nebula in this cosmic scene. Otherwise known as IC 405, the Flaming Star Nebula's billowing interstellar clouds of gas and dust lie about…
Milky Way over Shipwreck
What happened to this ship? It was carried aground by a giant storm that struck the coast of Argentina in 2002. The pictured abandoned boat, dubbed Naufragio del Chubasco ,…
W5: The Soul of Star Formation
Where do stars form? Many times, stars form in energetic regions where gas and dark dust are pushed around in chaotic mayhem. Pictured , bright massive stars near the center of W5…
Arp 240: A Bridge between Spiral Galaxies from Hubble
Why is there a bridge between these two spiral galaxies? Made of gas and stars, the bridge provides strong evidence that these two immense star systems have passed close to each…
Verona Rupes: Tallest Known Cliff in the Solar System
Could you survive a jump off the tallest cliff in the Solar System? Quite possibly. Verona Rupes on Uranus ' moon Miranda is estimated to be 20 kilometers deep -- ten times the…
East to West, Light and Shadow
On this November morning an old crescent Moon and morning star rise just before the Sun in a wide panoramic skyscape from Kenya's Amboseli National Park . Still below the limbs of…
Apollo 17 VIP Site Anaglyph
Get out your red/blue glasses and check out this stereo scene from Taurus-Littrow valley on the Moon! The color anaglyph features a detailed 3D view of Apollo 17's Lunar Rover in…
Ring Scan
Scroll right and you can cruise along the icy rings of Saturn . This high resolution scan is a mosaic of images presented in natural color. The images were recorded in May 2007…
NGC 7635: Bubble in a Cosmic Sea
Do you see the bubble in the center? Seemingly adrift in a cosmic sea of stars and glowing gas, the delicate, floating apparition in this widefield view is cataloged as NGC 7635 -…
Pluto's Sputnik Planum
Is there an ocean below Sputnik Planum on Pluto? The unusually smooth 1000-km wide golden expanse, visible in the featured image from New Horizons , appears segmented into…
Nova over Thailand
A nova in Sagittarius is bright enough to see with binoculars. Discovered last month by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN), the stellar explosion even…
NGC 4414: A Flocculent Spiral Galaxy
How much mass do flocculent spirals hide? The featured true color image of flocculent spiral galaxy NGC 4414 was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope to help answer this…
IC 5070: A Dusty Pelican in the Swan
The recognizable profile of the Pelican Nebula soars nearly 2,000 light-years away in the high flying constellation Cygnus, the Swan . Also known as IC 5070, this interstellar…
Philadelphia Perigee Full Moon
A supermoon sets over the metropolis of Philadelphia in this twilight snapshot captured on November 14 at 6:21am Eastern Standard Time. Within hours of the Moon's exact full…
Soyuz vs Supermoon
Faster than a speeding bullet , more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, this Soyuz rocket stands on the launch pad at Baikonur…
The Heart and Soul Nebulas
Is the heart and soul of our Galaxy located in Cassiopeia ? Possibly not, but that is where two bright emission nebulas nicknamed Heart and Soul can be found. The Heart Nebula ,…
Viewing discoveries from 9 December 2016 through 16 November 2016.