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.
Daphnis and the Rings of Saturn
What's happening to the rings of Saturn? A little moon making big waves. The moon is 8-kilometer Daphnis and it is making waves in the Keeler Gap of Saturn 's rings using just its…
Inside the Flame Nebula
The Flame Nebula stands out in this optical image of the dusty, crowded star forming regions toward Orion's belt , a mere 1,400 light-years away. X-ray data from the Chandra…
The Day After Mars
October 31, 1938 was the day after Martians encountered planet Earth, and everything was calm. Reports of the invasion were revealed to be part of a Halloween radio drama, the now…
The Ghostly Veil Nebula
A ghostly visage on a cosmic scale , these remains of shocked, glowing gas haunt planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus and form the Veil Nebula . The nebula itself…
M42: Inside the Orion Nebula
The Great Nebula in Orion , an immense, nearby starbirth region , is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas . Here, glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge…
Curiosity Rover Finds a Clay Cache on Mars
Why is there clay on Mars? On Earth, clay can form at the bottom of a peaceful lake when specific minerals trap water. At the pictured site on Mars , the robotic rover Curiosity…
The Space Station Crosses a Spotless Sun
Typically, the International Space Station is visible only at night. Slowly drifting across the night sky as it orbits the Earth, the International Space Station (ISS) can be seen…
Ghost Aurora over Canada
What does this aurora look like to you? While braving the cold to watch the skies above northern Canada early one morning in 2013, a most unusual aurora appeared. The aurora…
Gravity's Grin
Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, published over 100 years ago, predicted the phenomenon of gravitational lensing. And that's what gives these distant galaxies such…
The Ghosts of Cassiopeia
These bright rims and flowing shapes look ghostly on a cosmic scale. A telescopic view toward the constellation Cassiopeia , the colorful skyscape features swept-back,…
Dark 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…
Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh
The painting Starry Night is one of the most famous icons of the night sky ever created. The scene was painted by Vincent van Gogh in southern France in 1889. The swirling style…
Night Sky Reflections from the World's Largest Mirror
What's being reflected in the world's largest mirror? Stars, galaxies, and a planet. Many of these stars are confined to the grand arch that runs across the image, an arch that is…
Pluto at Night
The night side of Pluto spans this shadowy scene , a stunning spacebased view with the Sun 4.9 billion kilometers (almost 4.5 light-hours) behind the dim and distant world. It was…
All Female Spacewalk Repairs Space Station
The failed unit was beyond the reach of the robotic Canadarm2 . Therefore, this repair of the International Space Station would require humans. The humans on duty were NASA's…
Interstellar Interloper 2I/Borisov
After the 2017 detecton of 1I/'Oumuamua, comet 2I/Borisov has become the second recognized interstellar interloper. Like 'Oumuamua, Borisov's measured hyperbolic trajectory and…
Moons of Saturn
On July 29, 2011 the Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera took this snapshot and captured 5 of Saturn's moons , from just above the ringplane. Left to right are small moons…
BHB2007: A Baby Binary Star in Formation
How do binary stars form? To help find out, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array ( ALMA ) recently captured one of the highest resolution images yet taken of a binary star system in…
The Galaxy Above
Have you contemplated your home galaxy lately? If your sky looked like this, perhaps you'd contemplate it more often! The featured picture is actually a composite of two images…
Andromeda before Photoshop
What does the Andromeda galaxy really look like? The featured image shows how our Milky Way Galaxy 's closest major galactic neighbor really appears in a long exposure through…
A Stellar Jewel Box: Open Cluster NGC 290
Jewels don't shine this bright -- only stars do. Like gems in a jewel box, though, the stars of open cluster NGC 290 glitter in a beautiful display of brightness and color. The…
Interplanetary Earth
In an interplanetary first, on July 19, 2013 Earth was photographed on the same day from two other worlds of the Solar System, innermost planet Mercury and ringed gas giant…
Planet Earth at Blue Hour
Nature photographers and other fans of planet Earth always look forward to the blue hour . That's the transition in twilight , just before sunrise or after sunset, when the Sun is…
Mid-Air Meteor and Milky Way
On September 24, a late evening commercial flight from Singapore to Australia offered stratospheric views of the southern hemisphere's night sky, if you chose a window seat . In…
Viewing discoveries from 3 November 2019 through 10 October 2019.