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.
Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov
From somewhere else in the Milky Way galaxy, Comet 2I/Borisov is just visiting the Solar System. Discovered by Crimean amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov on August 30, 2019, the…
Full Moon Geminids
The dependable annual Geminid meteor shower will be near its peak tonight (December 13/14) and before tomorrow's dawn. As Earth crosses through the dusty trail of active asteroid…
Decorating the Sky
Bright stars, clouds of dust and glowing nebulae decorate this cosmic scene, a skyscape just north of Orion's belt . Close to the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, the wide field…
N63A: Supernova Remnant in Visible and X-ray
What has this supernova left behind? As little as 2,000 years ago, light from a massive stellar explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) first reached planet Earth. The LMC…
Starlink Satellite Trails over Brazil
What are those streaks over the horizon? New Starlink satellites reflecting sunlight. SpaceX launched 60 Starlink communication satellites in May and 60 more in November . These…
Looking Sideways from the Parker Solar Probe
Everybody sees the Sun. Nobody's been there. Starting in 2018 though, NASA launched the robotic Parker Solar Probe (PSP) to investigate regions near to the Sun for the first time.…
Geminid Meteors over Chile
Are meteors streaming out from a point in the sky? Yes, in a way. When the Earth crosses a stream of Sun-orbiting meteors , these meteors appear to come from the direction of the…
Lines of Time
In time stars trace lines through the night sky on a rotating planet . Taken over two hours or more, these digitally added consecutive exposures were made with a camera and wide…
Pleiades to Hyades
This cosmic vista stretches almost 20 degrees from top to bottom, across the dusty constellation Taurus . It begins at the Pleiades and ends at the Hyades, two star clusters…
Spiral Galaxy NGC 6744
Beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is nearly 175,000 light-years across, larger than our own Milky Way . It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern constellation…
Electric Night
It may appear, at first, like the Galaxy is producing the lightning, but really it's the Earth. The featured nighttime landscape was taken from a southern tip of the Italian…
M27: The Dumbbell Nebula
Is this what will become of our Sun? Quite possibly. The first hint of our Sun 's future was discovered inadvertently in 1764 . At that time, Charles Messier was compiling a list…
Mercury Crosses a Quiet Sun
What's that black dot crossing the Sun? The planet Mercury. Mercury usually passes over or under the Sun, as seen from Earth, but last month the Solar System's innermost planet…
Starburst Galaxy M94 from Hubble
Why does this galaxy have a ring of bright blue stars? Beautiful island universe Messier 94 lies a mere 15 million light-years distant in the northern constellation of the Hunting…
Star Trails for a Red Planet
Does Mars have a north star ? In long exposures of Earth's night sky , star trails make concentric arcs around the north celestial pole, the direction of our fair planet's axis of…
Galileo's Europa Remastered
Looping through the Jovian system in the late 1990s, the Galileo spacecraft recorded stunning views of Europa and uncovered evidence that the moon's icy surface likely hides a…
Moon and Planets at Twilight
This week's ongoing conjunction of Venus and Jupiter may have whetted your appetite for skygazing. Tonight is the main course though. On November 28, a young crescent Moon will…
Hoag's Object: A Nearly Perfect Ring Galaxy
Is this one galaxy or two? This question came to light in 1950 when astronomer Arthur Hoag chanced upon this unusual extragalactic object. On the outside is a ring dominated by…
Venus and Jupiter on the Horizon
What are those two bright objects on the horizon? Venus and Jupiter . The two brightest planets in the night sky passed very close together -- angularly -- just two days ago. In…
NGC 6995: The Bat Nebula
Do you see the bat? It haunts this cosmic close-up of the eastern Veil Nebula . The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, the expanding debris cloud from the death…
Apollo 12: Self-Portrait
Is this image art? 50 years ago, Apollo 12 astronaut-photographer Charles “Pete” Conrad recorded this masterpiece while documenting colleague Alan Bean 's lunar soil collection…
Apollo 12 and Surveyor 3 Stereo View
Put on your red/blue glasses and gaze across the western Ocean of Storms on the surface of the Moon. The 3D view features Apollo 12 astronaut Pete Conrad visiting the Surveyor 3…
Orion Rising
Looking toward the east in the early hours of a September morning this single exposure made with tripod and camera captured a simple visual experience. Rising above the tree-lined…
Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant
It's easy to get lost following the intricate looping filaments in this detailed image of supernova remnant Simeis 147. Also cataloged as Sharpless 2-240 it goes by the popular…
Viewing discoveries from 14 December 2019 through 21 November 2019.