Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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Zeta Oph: Runaway Star
Like a ship plowing through cosmic seas, runaway star Zeta Ophiuchi produces the arcing interstellar bow wave or bow shock seen in this stunning infrared portrait . In the…
Castle Eye View
The best known asterism in northern skies, The Big Dipper is easy to recognize, even when viewed upside down, though some might see a plough or wagon . The star names and the…
Dark Nebula LDN 1622 and Barnard's Loop
The silhouette of an intriguing dark nebula inhabits this cosmic scene. Lynds' Dark Nebula ( LDN ) 1622 appears below center against a faint background of glowing hydrogen gas…
Filaments of Active Galaxy NGC 1275
What keeps these filaments attached to this galaxy? The filaments persist in NGC 1275 even though the turmoil of galactic collisions should destroy them. First, active galaxy NGC…
Plane Contrail and Sun Halo
What's happened to the sky? Several common features of the daytime sky are interacting in uncommon ways. First, well behind the silhouetted hills, is the typically bright Sun . In…
Saturn in Infrared from Cassini
Many details of Saturn appear clearly in infrared light. Bands of clouds show great structure, including long stretching storms . Also quite striking in infrared is the unusual…
NGC 602 and Beyond
Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud , a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies 5 million year young star cluster NGC 602 . Surrounded by natal…
Split the Universe
Just now, before you hit the button, two future universes are possible. After pressing the button, though, you will live in only one. A real-web version of the famous Schrdinger's…
3D 67P
Get out your red/cyan glasses and gaze across the surface of Churyumov-Gerasimenko, aka Comet 67P. The stereo anaglyph was created by combining two images from the Rosetta…
Young Stars and Dusty Nebulae in Taurus
This complex of dusty nebulae lingers along the edge of the Taurus molecular cloud , a mere 450 light-years distant. Stars are forming on the cosmic scene. Composed from almost 40…
Nebula with Laser Beams
Four laser beams cut across this startling image of the Orion Nebula, as seen from ESO's Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert on planet Earth . Not part of an interstellar…
King of Wings Hoodoo under the Milky Way
This rock structure is not only surreal -- it's real. The reason it's not more famous is that it is, perhaps, smaller than one might guess: the capstone rock overhangs only a few…
Black Hole Accreting with Jet
What happens when a black hole devours a star? Many details remain unknown, but recent observations are providing new clues. In 2014, a powerful explosion was recorded by the…
Tardigrade in Moss
Is this an alien? Probably not, but of all the animals on Earth, the tardigrade might be the best candidate. That's because tardigrades are known to be able to go for decades…
Ganymede's Shadow
Approaching opposition early next month, Jupiter is offering some of its best telescopic views from planet Earth. On March 17, this impressively sharp image of the solar system's…
The Comet, the Owl, and the Galaxy
Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak poses for a Messier moment in this telescopic snapshot from March 21. In fact it shares the 1 degree wide field-of-view with two well-known…
SH2-155: The Cave Nebula
This skyscape features dusty Sharpless catalog emission region Sh2-155 , the Cave Nebula. In the telescopic image, data taken through a narrowband filter tracks the reddish glow…
Central Cygnus Skyscape
In cosmic brush strokes of glowing hydrogen gas , this beautiful skyscape unfolds across the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy near the northern end of the Great Rift and the center…
Fast Stars and Rogue Planets in the Orion Nebula
Start with the constellation of Orion. Below Orion's belt is a fuzzy area known as the Great Nebula of Orion. In this nebula is a bright star cluster known as the Trapezium ,…
The Aurora Tree
Yes, but can your tree do this? Pictured is a visual coincidence between the dark branches of a nearby tree and bright glow of a distant aurora. The beauty of the aurora --…
Equinox on a Spinning Earth
When does the line between day and night become vertical? Tomorrow. Tomorrow is an equinox on planet Earth, a time of year when day and night are most nearly equal. At an equinox,…
JWST: Ghosts and Mirrors
Ghosts aren't actually hovering over the James Webb Space Telescope . But the lights are out as it stands with gold tinted mirror segments and support structures folded in Goddard…
Phases of Venus
Just as the Moon goes through phases , Venus' visible sunlit hemisphere waxes and wanes . This composite of telescopic images illustrates the steady changes for the inner planet,…
Mimas in Saturnlight
Peering from the shadows, the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Mimas lies in near darkness alongside a dramatic sunlit crescent . The mosaic was captured near the Cassini spacecraft's…
Viewing discoveries from 8 April 2017 through 16 March 2017.