Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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NGC 3628: Sideways Spiral Galaxy
What do spiral galaxies look like sideways? Featured is a sharp telescopic view of a magnificent edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 3628 , a puffy galactic disk divided by dark dust lanes.…
Moon behind Lava Fountain
What's happened to the Moon? Nothing, but something has happened to the image of the Moon. The heat from a volcanic lava fountain in the foreground has warmed and made turbulent…
Aurora around Saturn's North Pole
Are Saturn's auroras like Earth's? To help answer this question, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cassini spacecraft monitored Saturn's North Pole simultaneously during…
A Powerful Solar Flare
It was one of the most powerful solar flares in recorded history. Occurring in 2003 and seen across the electromagnetic spectrum, the Sun briefly became over 100 times brighter in…
Aerosol Earth
For August 23, 2018 , the identification and distribution of aerosols in the Earth's atmosphere is shown in this dramatic, planet-wide visualization. Produced in real time, the…
Close Mars
Still bright in evening skies, Mars was just past opposition and closest to Earth on July 31, a mere 57.6 million kilometers away. Captured only a week later, this remarkable…
The NGC 6914 Complex
A study in contrasts, this colorful skyscape features stars, dust, and glowing gas in the vicinity of NGC 6914. The complex of reflection nebulae lies some 6,000 light-years away,…
Nearby Cepheid Variable RS Pup
In the center is one of the most important stars on the sky. This is partly because, by coincidence, it is surrounded by a dazzling reflection nebula . Pulsating RS Puppis , the…
Sea and Sky Glows over the Oregon Coast
Every step caused the sand to light up blue. That glow was bioluminescence -- a blue radiance that also lights the surf in this surreal scene captured last month at Meyer's Creek…
Total Solar Eclipse Shadow from a Balloon
Where were you during the Great American Eclipse of 2017? A year ago last week, over 100 million of people in North America went outside to see a partial eclipse of the Sun, while…
Fire on Earth
Sometimes, regions of planet Earth light up with fire. Since fire is the rapid acquisition of oxygen, and since oxygen is a key indicator of life, fire on any planet would be an…
Stripping ESO 137-001
Spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 hurtles through massive galaxy cluster Abell 3627 some 220 million light years away. The distant galaxy is seen in this colorful Hubble/Chandra composite…
Messier 20 and 21
The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. About 5,000 light-years away, the…
Comet, Heart and Soul
The greenish coma of comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner stands out at the left of this telephoto skyscape spanning over 10 degrees toward the northern constellations Cassiopeia and…
Asteroid Ryugu from Hayabusa2
This big space diamond has an estimated value of over 80 billion dollars. It's only diamond in shape, though -- asteroid 162173 Ryugu is thought to be composed of mostly nickel…
Glowing Elements in the Soul Nebula
Stars are forming in the Soul of the Queen of Aethopia. More specifically, a large star forming region called the Soul Nebula (IC 1898) can be found in the direction of the…
Active Prominences on a Quiet Sun
Why is the Sun so quiet? As the Sun enters into a period of time known as a Solar Minimum , it is, as expected, showing fewer sunspots and active regions than usual. The quietness…
Asperitas Clouds Over New Zealand
What kind of clouds are these? Although their cause is presently unknown, such unusual atmospheric structures, as menacing as they might seem, do not appear to be harbingers of…
Seeing Titan
Shrouded in a thick atmosphere, Saturn's largest moon Titan really is hard to see. Small particles suspended in the upper atmosphere cause an almost impenetrable haze, strongly…
Perseid Fireball and Persistent Train
Before local midnight on August 12 , this brilliant Perseid meteor flashed above the Poloniny Dark Sky Park, Slovakia, planet Earth. Streaking beside the summer Milky Way, its…
Parker vs Perseid
The brief flash of a bright Perseid meteor streaks across the upper right in this composited series of exposures made early Sunday morning near the peak of the annual Perseid…
Launch of the Parker Solar Probe
When is the best time to launch a probe to the Sun? The now historic answer -- which is not a joke because this really happened this past weekend -- was at night. Night, not only…
M86 in the Central Virgo Cluster
Is there a bridge of gas connecting these two great galaxies? Quite possibly, but it is hard to be sure. M86 on the upper left is a giant elliptical galaxy near the center of the…
The Pencil Nebula in Red and Blue
This shock wave plows through interstellar space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Near the top and moving up in this sharply detailed color composite, thin, bright, braided…
Viewing discoveries from 5 September 2018 through 13 August 2018.