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.
The Hyades Star Cluster
It is the closest cluster of stars to the Sun. The Hyades open cluster is bright enough to have been remarked on even thousands of years ago, yet is not as bright or compact as…
Parker: Sounds of the Solar Wind
What does the solar wind sound like? A wind of fast moving particles blows out from our Sun, and although space transmits sound poorly, particle impact and variable-field data…
Quadrantid Meteors through Orion
Why are these meteor trails nearly parallel ? Because they were all shed by the same space rock and so can be traced back to the same direction on the sky: the radiant of the…
M1: The Incredible Expanding Crab Nebula
Are your eyes good enough to see the Crab Nebula expand? The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact,…
An Almost Eclipse of the Moon
This composited series of images follows the Moon on January 10, the first Full Moon of 2020, in Hungarian skies. The lunar disk is in mid-eclipse at the center of the sequence…
Apollo 17: A Stereo View from Lunar Orbit
Get out your red/blue glasses and check out this awesome stereo view of another world. The scene was recorded by Apollo 17 mission commander Eugene Cernan on December 11, 1972,…
NGC 247 and Friends
About 70,000 light-years across, NGC 247 is a spiral galaxy smaller than our Milky Way. Measured to be only 11 million light-years distant it is nearby though. Tilted nearly…
Iridescent Clouds over Sweden
Why would these clouds multi-colored? A relatively rare phenomenon in clouds known as iridescence can bring up unusual colors vividly or even a whole spectrum of colors…
Evidence of an Active Volcano on Venus
Are volcanoes still active on Venus? More volcanoes are known on Venus than Earth, but when Venus ian volcanoes last erupted is not directly known. Evidence bolstering very recent…
A Desert Eclipse
A good place to see a ring-of-fire eclipse, it seemed, would be from a desert. In a desert, there should be relatively few obscuring clouds and trees. Therefore late last December…
Stars and Dust in Corona Australis
Cosmic dust clouds and young, energetic stars inhabit this telescopic vista , less than 500 light-years away toward the northern boundary of Corona Australis , the Southern Crown.…
NGC 602 and Beyond
Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud , a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies 5 million year young star cluster NGC 602 . Surrounded by natal…
Nacreous Clouds over Sweden
Vivid and lustrous, wafting iridescent waves of color filled this mountain and skyscape near Tanndalen, Sweden on January 3. Known as nacreous clouds or mother-of-pearl clouds,…
Perihelion to Aphelion
Perihelion for 2020 , the point in Earth's elliptical orbit when it is closest to the Sun, occurred on January 5th. The distance from the Sun doesn't determine the seasons,…
Galaxies in the River
Large galaxies grow by eating small ones. Even our own galaxy engages in a sort of galactic cannibalism , absorbing small galaxies that are too close and are captured by the Milky…
IC 405: The Flaming Star Nebula
Rippling dust and gas lanes give the Flaming Star Nebula its name. The orange and purple colors of the nebula are present in different regions and are created by different…
Tumultuous Clouds of Jupiter
Some cloud patterns on Jupiter are quite complex. The featured tumultuous clouds were captured in May by NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft currently orbiting our Solar System 's…
A Starry Night of Iceland
On some nights, the sky is the best show in town. On this night, the sky was not only the best show in town, but a composite image of the sky won an international competition for…
Aurora Slathers Up the Sky
Like salsa verde on your favorite burrito, a green aurora slathers up the sky in this 2017 June 25 snapshot from the International Space Station. About 400 kilometers (250 miles)…
Quadrantids over the Great Wall
Named for a forgotten constellation , the Quadrantid Meteor Shower is an annual event for planet Earth's northern hemisphere skygazers The shower's radiant on the sky lies within…
The Fainting of Betelgeuse
Begirt with many a blazing star , Orion the Hunter is one of the most recognizable constellations. In this night skyscape the Hunter's stars rise in the northern hemisphere's…
Betelgeuse Imagined
Why is Betelgeuse fading? No one knows. Betelgeuse , one of the brightest and most recognized star s in the night sky, is only half as bright as it used to be only five months…
M33: The Triangulum Galaxy
The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy . M33…
Messier 20 and 21
The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. About 5,000 light-years away, the…
Viewing discoveries from 22 January 2020 through 30 December 2019.