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.
55 Nights with Saturn
For 55 consecutive nights Mediterranean skies were at least partly clear this summer, from the 1st of July to the 24th of August 2018. An exposure from each night was incorporated…
The Light, the Dark, and the Dusty
This colorful skyscape spans about two full moons across nebula rich starfields along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy in the royal northern constellation Cepheus . Near the edge…
M33: Triangulum Galaxy
The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy . M33…
The Sun's Spectrum with its Missing Colors
It is still not known why the Sun's light is missing some colors. Here are all the visible colors of the Sun , produced by passing the Sun's light through a prism -like device.…
Highlights of the North Autumn Sky
What can you see in the night sky this season? The featured graphic gives a few highlights for Earth's northern hemisphere. Viewed as a clock face centered at the bottom, early…
Rover 1A Hops on Asteroid Ryugu
Two small robots have begun hopping around the surface of asteroid Ryugu. The rovers, each the size of a small frying pan , move around the low gravity of kilometer-sized 162173…
Equinox: Analemma over the Callanish Stones
Does the Sun return to the same spot on the sky every day at the same time? No. A more visual answer to that question is an analemma , a composite image taken from the same spot…
Window Seat over Hudson Bay
On the August 18 night flight from San Francisco to Zurich, a window seat offered this tantalizing view when curtains of light draped a colorful glow across the sky over Hudson…
Irregular Galaxy NGC 55
Irregular galaxy NGC 55 is thought to be similar to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). But while the LMC is about 180,000 light-years away and is a well known satellite of our own…
Stars and Dust in Corona Australis
Cosmic dust clouds and young, energetic stars inhabit this telescopic vista , less than 500 light-years away toward the northern boundary of Corona Australis , the Southern Crown.…
Cocoon Nebula Deep Field
Inside the Cocoon Nebula is a newly developing cluster of stars. The cosmic Cocoon on the upper right also punctuates a long trail of obscuring interstellar dust clouds to its…
Salt, Pepper, and Ice
There's a "camera" comet now moving across the sky. Just a bit too dim to see with the unaided eye, Comet 21P / Giacobini-Zinner has developed a long tail that makes it a good…
Cosmic Collision Forges Galactic Ring
How could a galaxy become shaped like a ring? The rim of the blue galaxy pictured on the right is an immense ring-like structure 150,000 light years in diameter composed of newly…
A Solar Filament Erupts
What's happened to our Sun? Nothing very unusual -- it just threw a filament . Toward the middle of 2012, a long standing solar filament suddenly erupted into space producing an…
Mont Blanc, Meteor, and Milky Way
Snowy Mont Blanc is near the center of this atmospheric night skyscape. But high, thin clouds fogged the skies at the photographer's location, looking south toward Europe's…
Ice Halos at Yellowknife
You've probably seen a circle around the Sun before . More common than rainbows, ice halos, like a 22 degree circular halo for example, can be easy to spot, especially if you can…
Comet, Clusters and Nebulae
Bright enough for binocular viewing Comet 21P / Giacobini-Zinner stands out, even in this deep telephoto mosaic of the star cluster and nebula rich constellation Auriga the…
Lunations
Our Moon's appearance changes nightly. As the Moon orbits the Earth, the half illuminated by the Sun first becomes increasingly visible, then decreasingly visible. The featured…
Milky Way over Troll's Tongue
You have to take a long hike to see the Troll's Tongue -- ten hours over rocky terrain. And in this case, it took three trips to capture the landform below a clear night sky.…
Curiosity Vista from Vera Rubin Ridge
If you could stand on Mars -- what might you see? If you were NASA's Curiosity rover, just last month you would have seen the view from Vera Rubin Ridge, an intriguing rock-strewn…
M1: The Crab Nebula from Hubble
This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula , the result of a supernova seen in 1054 AD , is filled with mysterious filaments. The filaments are not only…
Real Time Perseid
Bright meteors and dark night skies made this year's Perseid meteor shower a great time for a weekend campout. And while packing away their equipment, skygazers at a campsite in…
Saturn's North Polar Hexagon
In full view , the amazing six-sided jet stream known as Saturn's north polar hexagon is shown in this colorful Cassini image. Extending to 70 degrees north latitude, the…
Along the Western Veil
Delicate in appearance, these filaments of shocked, glowing gas, are draped across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus. They form the western part of the Veil…
Viewing discoveries from 29 September 2018 through 6 September 2018.