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.
Earth at Night
Can you find your favorite country or city ? Surprisingly, on this world-wide nightscape, city lights make this task quite possible. Human-made lights highlight particularly…
Hidden Galaxy IC 342
Similar in size to large, bright spiral galaxies in our neighborhood, IC 342 is a mere 10 million light-years distant in the long-necked, northern constellation Camelopardalis . A…
A View Toward M106
Big, bright, beautiful spiral, Messier 106 dominates this cosmic vista. The two degree wide telescopic field of view looks toward the well-trained constellation Canes Venatici,…
Atlas, Daphnis, and Pan
Atlas , Daphnis , and Pan are small, inner, ring moons of Saturn, shown at the same scale in this montage of images from the still Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft. In fact,…
Aphelion Sunrise
On July 3rd, planet Earth reached aphelion , the farthest point in its elliptical orbit around the Sun. Each year, this day of the most distant Sun happens to occur during winter…
The Summer Triangle over the Great Wall
Have you ever seen the Summer Triangle ? The bright stars Vega , Deneb , and Altair form a large triangle on the sky that can be seen rising in the northern spring during the…
Mountains of Dust in the Carina Nebula
It's stars versus dust in the Carina Nebula and the stars are winning. More precisely, the energetic light and winds from massive newly formed stars are evaporating and dispersing…
3D Lava Falls of Mars
Get out your red/cyan glasses and gaze across lava falls of Mars. The stereo anaglyph was created by combining two images recorded by the HiRISE camera onboard Mars Reconnaissance…
NGC 7814: The Little Sombrero in Pegasus
Point your telescope toward the high flying constellation Pegasus and you can find this expanse of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies . Dominated by NGC 7814, the pretty field…
Symbiotic R Aquarii
A long recognized naked-eye variable star, R Aquarii is actually an interacting binary star system, two stars that seem to have a close, symbiotic relationship . About 710 light…
Composite Messier 20 and 21
The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, lies about 5,000 light-years away, a colorful study in cosmic contrasts . It shares this nearly 1 degree wide field with…
The M81 Galaxy Group through the Integrated Flux Nebula
Distant galaxies and nearby nebulas highlight this deep image of the M81 Group of galaxies. First and foremost in this 80-exposure mosaic is the grand design spiral galaxy M81 ,…
Artistic Impression: The Surface of TRAPPIST-1f
If you could stand on the surface of the newly discovered Earth-sized exoplanet TRAPPIST-1f, what would you see? Presently, no Earthling knows for sure, but the featured…
The N44 Superbubble
What created this gigantic hole? The vast emission nebula N44 in our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud has a large, 250 light-year hole and astronomers are trying to…
Markarian's Chain to Messier 64
Top to bottom , this colorful and broad telescopic mosaic links Markarian's Chain of galaxies across the core of the Virgo Cluster to dusty spiral galaxy Messier 64. Galaxies are…
Solstice Conjunction over Budapest
Before a solstice Sun rose on June 21, brilliant Venus and an old crescent Moon posed together over Budapest, Hungary for this predawn skyscape . In the foreground the view looks…
Northern Summer on Titan
While yesterday's solstice brought summer to planet Earth's northern hemisphere, a northern summer solstice arrived for ringed planet Saturn nearly a month ago on May 24.…
A Sundial that Shows Solstice
What day is it? If the day -- and time -- are right, this sundial will tell you: SOLSTICE . Only then will our Sun be located just right for sunlight to stream through openings…
The Massive Stars in Westerlund 1
Star cluster Westerlund 1 is home to some of the largest and most massive stars known. It is headlined by the star Westerlund 1-26 , a red supergiant star so big that if placed in…
Saturn near Opposition
Saturn reached its 2017 opposition on June 16. Of course, opposition means opposite the Sun in Earth's sky and near opposition Saturn is up all night, at its closest and brightest…
Manhattan Moonrise
A Full Moon rose as the Sun set on June 9, known to some as a Strawberry Moon. Close to the horizon and taking on the warm color of reflected sunlight filtered through a dense and…
Red Sprites over the Channel
Mysterious and incredibly brief, red sprites are seen to occur high above large thunderstorms on planet Earth. While they have been recorded from low Earth orbit or high flying…
M89: Elliptical Galaxy with Outer Shells and Plumes
Can you see them? This famous Messier object M89 , a seemingly simple elliptical galaxy , is surrounded by faint shells and plumes. The cause of the shells is currently unknown,…
The Great Nebula in Carina
In one of the brightest parts of Milky Way lies a nebula where some of the oddest things occur. NGC 3372, known as the Great Nebula in Carina , is home to massive stars and…
Viewing discoveries from 9 July 2017 through 13 June 2017.