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.
Doomed Star Eta Carinae
Eta Carinae may be about to explode. But no one knows when - it may be next year, it may be one million years from now. Eta Carinae 's mass - about 100 times greater than our Sun…
Comet Iwamoto Before Spiral Galaxy NGC 2903
It isn't every night that a comet passes a galaxy. Last Thursday, though, binocular comet C/2018 Y1 (Iwamoto)) moved nearly in front of a spiral galaxy of approximately the same…
Dragon Aurora over Iceland
Have you ever seen a dragon in the sky? Although real flying dragons don't exist, a huge dragon-shaped aurora developed in the sky over Iceland earlier this month . The aurora was…
Shadow of a Martian Robot
What if you saw your shadow on Mars and it wasn't human ? Then you might have been the Opportunity rover exploring Mars. Opportunity explored the red planet from 2004 to 2018,…
NGC 2359: Thor's Helmet
NGC 2359 is a helmet-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages popularly called Thor's Helmet. Heroically sized even for a Norse god , Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years…
Opportunity at Perseverance Valley
Opportunity had already reached Perseverance Valley by June of 2018. Its view is reconstructed in a colorized mosaic of images taken by the Mars Exploration Rover's Navcam. In…
Solar System Family Portait
On Valentine's Day in 1990, cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back one last time to make this first ever Solar System family portrait . The…
The Helix Nebula in Hydrogen and Oxygen
Is the Helix Nebula looking at you? No, not in any biological sense, but it does look quite like an eye. The Helix Nebula is so named because it also appears that you are looking…
Plane Crossing a Crescent Moon
No, this is not a good way to get to the Moon . What is pictured is a chance superposition of an airplane and the Moon. The contrail would normally appear white, but the large…
New Data: Ultima Thule Surprisingly Flat
Ultima Thule is not the object humanity thought that it was last month. When the robotic New Horizons spacecraft zoomed past the distant asteroid Ultima Thule (officially 2014…
Venus Unveiled
What does Venus look like beneath its thick clouds? These clouds keep the planet's surface hidden from even the powerful telescopic eyes of Earth-bound astronomers. In the early…
Comet Iwamoto and the Sombrero Galaxy
Comet Iwamoto (C/2018 Y1) , shows off a pretty, greenish coma at the upper left in this telescopic field of view. Taken on February 4 from the Mount John Observatory , University…
Moon, Four Planets, and Emu
A luminous Milky Way falls toward the horizon in this deep skyscape, starting at the top of the frame from the stars of the Southern Cross and the dark Coalsack Nebula. Captured…
Fox Fur, Unicorn, and Christmas Tree
Clouds of glowing hydrogen gas fill this colorful skyscape in the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros , the Unicorn. A star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264 , the…
Moon and Venus Appulse over a Tree
What's that bright spot near the Moon? Venus . About a week ago, Earth's Moon appeared unusually close to the distant planet Venus, an angular coincidence known as an appulse .…
Perijove 16: Passing Jupiter
Watch Juno zoom past Jupiter again. NASA's robotic spacecraft Juno is continuing on its 53-day, highly-elongated orbits around our Solar System's largest planet. The featured…
Henize 70: A Superbubble in the LMC
Massive stars profoundly affect their galactic environments. Churning and mixing interstellar clouds of gas and dust, stars -- most notably those upwards of tens of times the mass…
An Airglow Fan from Lake to Sky
Why would the sky look like a giant fan? Airglow . The featured intermittent green glow appeared to rise from a lake through the arch of our Milky Way Galaxy , as captured during…
LDN 1622: Dark Nebula in Orion
The silhouette of an intriguing dark nebula inhabits this cosmic scene. Lynds' Dark Nebula ( LDN ) 1622 appears against a faint background of glowing hydrogen gas only easily seen…
Twin Galaxies in Virgo
Spiral galaxy pair NGC 4567 and NGC 4568 share this sharp cosmic vista with lonely elliptical galaxy NGC 4564. All are members of the large Virgo Galaxy Cluster . With their…
Sharpless 308: Star Bubble
Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is huge. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,200 light-years away toward the constellation of the Big Dog…
Wide Field View of Great American Eclipse
Only in the fleeting darkness of a total solar eclipse is the light of the solar corona easily visible. Normally overwhelmed by the bright solar disk, the expansive corona , the…
Ultima Thule from New Horizons
How do distant asteroids differ from those near the Sun? To help find out, NASA sent the robotic New Horizons spacecraft past the classical Kuiper belt object 2014 MU69 ,…
The Long Gas Tail of Spiral Galaxy D100
Why is there long red streak attached to this galaxy? The streak is made mostly of glowing hydrogen that has been systematically stripped away as the galaxy moved through the…
Viewing discoveries from 20 February 2019 through 28 January 2019.