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.
The Extraordinary Spiral in LL Pegasi
What created the strange spiral structure on the upper left? No one is sure, although it is likely related to a star in a binary star system entering the planetary nebula phase,…
A Northern Summer's Night
Near a summer's midnight a mist haunts the river bank in this dreamlike skyscape taken on July 3rd from northern Denmark. Reddened light from the Sun a little below the horizon…
Charon: Moon of Pluto
A darkened and mysterious north polar region known to some as Mordor Macula caps this premier high-resolution view. The portrait of Charon , Pluto's largest moon, was captured by…
Shadow Rise on the Inside Passage
At sunset look east not west. As Earth's dark shadow rises from the eastern horizon, faint and subtle colors will appear opposite the setting Sun. This beautiful evening sea and…
Dawn's Early Light, Rocket's Red Glare
If you saw the dawn's early light from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station last Friday, June 29, then you could have seen this rocket's red glare. The single 277-second long…
An Airplane in Front of the Moon
If you look closely at the Moon, you will see a large airplane in front of it. Well, not always. OK, hardly ever. Actually, to capture an image like this takes precise timing , an…
From the Galactic Plane through Antares
Behold one of the most photogenic regions of the night sky, captured impressively. Featured, the band of our Milky Way Galaxy runs diagonally along the far left, while the…
Fresh Tiger Stripes on Saturn's Enceladus
Do underground oceans vent through the tiger stripes on Saturn's moon Enceladus? Long features dubbed tiger stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon's icy interior into…
The East 96th Street Moon
A very full Moon rose over Manhattan's Upper Eastside on June 28, known to some as the Strawberry Moon . Near the horizon, the warm yellow lunar disk was a bit ruffled and dimmed…
Messier 24: Sagittarius Star Cloud
Unlike most entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog of deep sky objects, M24 is not a bright galaxy, star cluster, or nebula. It's a gap in nearby, obscuring interstellar dust…
Sigma Octantis and Friends
South pole star Sigma Octantis (of the constellation Octans) is on the left of this starry expanse spanning over 40 degrees across far southern skies. You'll have to look hard to…
Highlights of the Summer Sky
What can you see in the night sky this summer? The featured graphic gives a few highlights for Earth's northern hemisphere. Viewed as a clock face centered at the bottom, early…
Dark Nebulas across Taurus
Sometimes even the dark dust of interstellar space has a serene beauty. One such place occurs toward the constellation of Taurus. The filaments featured here can be found on the…
Hayabusa2 Approaches Asteroid Ryugu
It looks like a big space diamond -- but with craters. It's 162173 Ryugu ( Dragon's Castle ), and Japan 's robotic Hayabusa2 mission is now arriving at this near-Earth asteroid.…
Rocket Plume Shadow Points to the Moon
Why would the shadow of a space shuttle launch plume point toward the Moon? In early 2001 during a launch of Atlantis , the Sun , Earth , Moon , and rocket were all properly…
Curiosity's Dusty Self
Winds on Mars can't actually blow spacecraft over. But in the low gravity, martian winds can loft fine dust particles in planet-wide storms, like the dust storm now raging on the…
Galaxy in a Crystal Ball
A small crystal ball seems to hold a whole galaxy in this creative snapshot . Of course, the galaxy is our own Milky Way. Its luminous central bulge marked by rifts of…
Northern Lights and Noctilucent Clouds
Luminous skies after the near-solstice sunset on June 17 are reflected in this calm lake. The tranquil twilight scene was captured near Bashaw, Alberta, Canada, northern planet…
Pillars of the Eagle Nebula in Infrared
Newborn stars are forming in the Eagle Nebula. Gravitationally contracting in pillars of dense gas and dust, the intense radiation of these newly-formed bright stars is causing…
Ancients of Sea and Sky
They may look like round rocks, but they're alive. Moreover, they are modern versions of one of the oldest known forms of life: stromatolites . Fossils indicate that stromatolites…
An Active Prominence on the Sun
Sometimes the Sun's surface becomes a whirlwind of activity. Pictured is a time-lapse video of the Sun's surface taken over a two hour period in early May, run both forwards and…
Mars Engulfed
What's happened to Mars? In 2001 , Mars underwent a tremendous planet-wide dust storm -- one of the largest ever recorded from Earth. To show the extent, these two Hubble Space…
Dusty With a Chance of Dust
It's storm season on Mars. Dusty with a chance of dust is the weather report for Gale crater as a recent planet-scale dust storm rages. On June 10 looking toward the…
Little Planet Soyuz
Engines blazing , a large rocket bids farewell to this little planet. Of course, the little planet is really planet Earth and the large rocket is a Soyuz-FG rocket. Launched from…
Viewing discoveries from 8 July 2018 through 15 June 2018.