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.
IC 4592: The Blue Horsehead Reflection Nebula
Do you see the horse's head? What you are seeing is not the famous Horsehead nebula toward Orion but rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiar form with deeper…
Flying Saucer Crash Lands in Utah Desert
A flying saucer from outer space crash-landed in the Utah desert after being tracked by radar and chased by helicopters. The year was 2004, and no space aliens were involved. The…
Lunar LOVE
A more creative search by a group of amateur astronomers in the Ehime Prefecture of Shikoku Island, Japan has found lunar L-O-V-E . Their secret was an examination of this sharp…
Cygnus Shell Supernova Remnant W63
The ghost of a long-dead star , the W63 supernova remnant shines like a faint cosmic smoke-ring along the plane of the Milky Way galaxy toward the northern constellation Cygnus…
Hayabusa2 Ascends from Asteroid Ryugu
Will spacecraft Hayabusa2 be able to land safely on asteroid Ryugu? Since arriving in June, pictures show that the surface of kilometer-sized Ryugu is covered with boulders, so…
R Leporis: A Vampire's Star
Better known as Hind's Crimson Star , R Leporis is a rare star in planet Earth's night sky. It's also a shocking shade of red. The star's discoverer, 19th century English…
Orionids Meteors over Inner Mongolia
Meteors have been shooting out from the constellation of Orion. This was expected, as October is the time of year for the Orionids Meteor Shower . Pictured here, over two dozen…
Shells of Stars in Elliptical Galaxy PGC 42871
How do galaxies grow? To help find out, the Hubble Space Telescope was deployed to image the unusual elliptical galaxy PGC 42871. How this galaxy came to be surrounded by numerous…
Ultraviolet Earth from an Observatory on the Moon
Which planet is this? Earth . The featured false color picture shows how the Earth shines in ultraviolet (UV) light. The image is historic because it was taken from the surface of…
Airglow Borealis
The best known asterism in northern skies hangs over the Canadian Rockies in this mountain and night skyscape taken last week from Banff National Park. But most remarkable is the…
IC 59 and IC 63 in Cassiopeia
These bright rims and flowing shapes look ghostly on a cosmic scale. A telescopic view toward the constellation Cassiopeia , the colorful (zoomable) skyscape features the…
Barnard 150: Seahorse in Cepheus
Light-years across, this suggestive shape known as the Seahorse Nebula appears in silhouette against a rich, luminous background of stars. Seen toward the royal northern…
Light Pillars over Whitefish Bay
What's happening in the sky? Unusual lights appeared last week to hover above Whitefish Bay on the eastern edge of Lake Superior between the USA and Canada . Unsure of the cause,…
Hyperion: Largest Known Galaxy Proto-Supercluster
How did galaxies form in the early universe? To help find out, astronomers surveyed a patch of dark night sky with the Very Large Telescope array in Chile to find and count…
Apollo 12 Visits Surveyor 3
Apollo 12 was the second mission to land humans on the Moon . The landing site was picked to be near the location of Surveyor 3, a robot spacecraft that had landed on the Moon…
Meteor, Comet, and Seagull (Nebula)
A meteor, a comet, and a photogenic nebula have all been captured in this single image. The closest and most fleeting is the streaking meteor on the upper right -- it was visible…
Halo of the Cat's Eye
Not a Falcon 9 rocket launch after sunset, the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its haunting symmetries are seen in the very…
Summer to Winter Milky Way
Taken near local midnight, this autumn night's panorama follows the arch of the Milky Way across the northern horizon from the High Fens, Eifel Nature Park at the border of…
Cherenkov Telescope at Sunset
On October 10, a new telescope reflected the light of the setting Sun. With dark horizon above and sunset colors below, its segmented mirror inverts an image of the beautiful…
M15: Dense Globular Star Cluster
Messier 15 is an immense swarm of over 100,000 stars. A 13 billion year old relic of the early formative years of our galaxy it's one of about 170 globular star clusters that…
Jupiter in Ultraviolet from Hubble
Jupiter looks a bit different in ultraviolet light. To better interpret Jupiter 's cloud motions and to help NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft understand the planetary context of the…
M16: In and Around the Eagle Nebula
From afar, the whole thing looks like an Eagle . A closer look at the Eagle Nebula , however, shows the bright region is actually a window into the center of a larger dark shell…
Orion in Red and Blue
When did Orion become so flashy? This colorful rendition of part of the constellation of Orion comes from red light emitted by hydrogen and sulfur (SII), and blue-green light…
Skygazers on the Beach
Kona, a young boxer, is a dog who loves splashing in the waves along Solana Beach near San Diego, planet Earth . But he paused here, at least briefly, during an early evening romp…
Viewing discoveries from 5 November 2018 through 13 October 2018.