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.
Eagle Aurora over Norway
What's that in the sky? An aurora. A large coronal mass ejection occurred on our Sun five days before this 2012 image was taken, throwing a cloud of fast moving electrons,…
The Eagle Rises
Get out your red/blue glasses and check out this stereo view from lunar orbit. The 3D anaglyph was created from two photographs ( AS11-44-6633 , AS11-44-6634 ) taken by astronaut…
Magellanic 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 a well-known satellite of our own…
The Ghost of Jupiter's Halo
Close-up images of NGC 3242 show the cast off shroud of a dying, sun-like star fancifully known as The Ghost of Jupiter nebula. But this deep and wide telescopic view also finds…
4000 Exoplanets
Over 4000 planets are now known to exist outside our Solar System. Known as exoplanets, this milestone was passed last month, as recorded by NASA's Exoplanet Archive. The featured…
Birds During a Total Solar Eclipse
What do birds do during a total solar eclipse? Darkness descends more quickly in a total eclipse than during sunset, but returns just as quickly -- and perhaps unexpectedly to the…
The Galactic Center in Radio from MeerKAT
What's happening at the center of our galaxy? It's hard to tell with optical telescopes since visible light is blocked by intervening interstellar dust. In other bands of light,…
Crescent Saturn
Saturn never shows a crescent phase -- from Earth. But when viewed from beyond, the majestic giant planet can show an unfamiliar diminutive sliver. This image of crescent Saturn…
8 Minute and 30 Second Eclipse
The total phase of the July 2nd solar eclipse lasted about 4 minutes and 30 seconds at the point of maximum eclipse . On the surface of planet Earth, that was about 600 nautical…
La Silla Eclipse Sequence
The road to the high mountaintop La Silla Observatory in the Chilean Atacama Desert also led in to the path of July 2nd's total solar eclipse . Recorded at regular intervals…
In the Shadow of the Moon
On July 2 denizens of planet Earth could stand in the Moon's dark umbral shadow during South America's 2019 total solar eclipse. It first touched down in the Southern Pacific…
Robotic Dragonfly Selected to Fly Across Titan
If you could fly across Titan, what would you see? To find out and to better explore this exotic moon of Saturn, NASA recently green-lighted Dragonfly, a mission to Titan with…
NGC 1566: The Spanish Dancer Spiral Galaxy
If not perfect, then this spiral galaxy is at least one of the most photogenic. An island universe containing billions of stars and situated about 40 million light-years away…
The Big Corona
Most photographs don't adequately portray the magnificence of the Sun 's corona. Seeing the corona first-hand during a total solar eclipse is unparalleled . The human eye can…
Virtual Flight over Asteroid Vesta
What would it be like to fly over the asteroid Vesta? Animators from the German Aerospace Center took actual images and height data from NASA's Dawn mission when it visited…
M83: The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy
Big, bright, and beautiful, spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra . Prominent spiral arms…
A Solstice Night in Paris
The night of June 21 was the shortest night for planet Earth's northern latitudes, so at latitude 48.9 degrees north, Paris was no exception. Still, the City of Light had an…
The Longer Days
This persistent six month long exposure compresses the time from solstice to solstice (December 21, 2018 to June 16, 2019) into a single point of view. Dubbed a solargraph , the…
Noctilucent Clouds, Reflections, and Silhouettes
Sometimes it's night on the ground but day in the air. As the Earth rotates to eclipse the Sun, sunset rises up from the ground. Therefore, at sunset on the ground, sunlight still…
25 Brightest Stars in the Night Sky
Do you know the names of some of the brightest stars? It's likely that you do, even though some bright stars have names so old they date back to near the beginning of written…
Anticrepuscular Rays Converge Opposite the Sun
Is there ever anything interesting to see in the direction opposite the Sun? Sometimes there is. Notable items include your own shadow , a shadow of the Moon during a total solar…
Carina Nebula Panorama from Hubble
How do violent stars affect their surroundings? To help find out, astronomers created a 48-frame high-resolution, controlled-color panorama of the center of the Carina Nebula ,…
Ares 3 Landing Site: The Martian Revisited
This close-up from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera shows weathered craters and windblown deposits in southern Acidalia Planitia . A striking shade of blue in…
Sunset Analemma
Today, the solstice is at 15:54 Universal Time , the Sun reaching the northernmost declination in its yearly journey through planet Earth's sky . A June solstice marks the…
Viewing discoveries from 14 July 2019 through 21 June 2019.