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.
Wide Field: Fox Fur, Unicorn, and Christmas Tree
What do the following things have in common: a cone, the fur of a fox, and a Christmas tree? Answer: they all occur in the constellation of the unicorn ( Monoceros ). Pictured as…
Milky Way and Zodiacal Light over Chile
What is the band of light connecting the ground to the Milky Way? Zodiacal light -- a stream of dust that orbits the Sun in the inner Solar System . It is most easily seen just…
Wolf-Rayet Star 124: Stellar Wind Machine
Some stars explode in slow motion. Rare, massive Wolf-Rayet stars are so tumultuous and hot that they are slowly disintegrating right before our telescopes. Glowing gas globs each…
Pic du Midi Panorama
A surreal night skyscape, this panorama stitched from 12 photos looks to the west at an evening winter sky over Pic du Midi Observatory, Pyrenees Mountains, Planet Earth.…
Mars Panorama from Curiosity
The Mars Rover named Curiosity recorded high-resolution, 360 degree views of its location on Mars late last year. The panoramic scene was stitched from over 1,000 images from…
The Light, the Dark, and the Dusty
This colorful skyscape spans about four full moons across nebula rich starfields along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy in the royal northern constellation Cepheus . Near the…
The Slow Dance of Galaxies NGC 5394 and 5395
If you like slow dances , then this may be one for you. A single turn in this dance takes several hundred million years . Two galaxies, NGC 5394 and NGC 5395, slowly whirl about…
Apollo 13 Views of the Moon
What if the only way to get back to Earth was to go around the far side of the Moon? Such was the dilemma of the Apollo 13 Crew in 1970 as they tried to return home in their…
Sharpless-308: The Dolphin Nebula
Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is much larger than the dolphin it appears to be. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,200 light-years away…
A Hole in Mars
What created this unusual hole in Mars? The hole was discovered by chance in 2011 on images of the dusty slopes of Mars' Pavonis Mons volcano taken by the HiRISE instrument aboard…
Julius Caesar and Leap Days
In 46 BC Julius Caesar reformed the calendar system . Based on advice by astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria , the Julian calendar included one leap day every four years to account…
South Celestial Rocket Launch
At sunset on December 6 a Rocket Lab Electron rocket was launched from a rotating planet. With multiple small satellites on board it departed on a mission to low Earth orbit…
Two Hemisphere Night Sky
The Sun is hidden by a horizon that runs across the middle in this two hemisphere view of Earth's night sky . The digitally stitched mosaics were recorded from corresponding…
NGTS-10b: Discovery of a Doomed Planet
This hot jupiter is doomed. Hot jupiters are giant planets like Jupiter that orbit much closer to their parent stars than Mercury does to our Sun . But some hot jupiters are more…
Jupiter's Magnetic Field from Juno
How similar is Jupiter's magnetic field to Earth's? NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft has found that Jupiter's magnetic field is surprisingly complex, so that the Jovian world does…
Moon Corona, Halo, and Arcs over Manitoba
Yes, but could you get to work on time if the Moon looked like this? As the photographer was preparing to drive to work, refraction , reflection , and even diffraction of…
Illustris Simulation of the Universe
How did we get here? Click play, sit back, and watch. A computer simulation of the evolution of the universe provides insight into how galaxies formed and perspectives into…
Central Centaurus A
A mere 11 million light-years away, Centaurus A is the closest active galaxy to planet Earth. Also known as NGC 5128 , the peculiar elliptical galaxy is over 60,000 light-years…
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 visible in…
Trifecta at Twilight
On February 18, as civil twilight began in northern New Mexico skies, the International Space Station, a waning crescent Moon, and planet Mars for a moment shared this…
UGC 12591: The Fastest Rotating Galaxy Known
Why does this galaxy spin so fast? To start, even identifying which type of galaxy UGC 12591 is difficult -- featured on the lower left, it has dark dust lanes like a spiral…
Orion over the Central Bohemian Highlands
Do you recognize this constellation? Setting past the Central Bohemian Highlands in the Czech Republic is Orion , one of the most identifiable star groupings on the sky and an…
The Changing Surface of Fading Betelgeuse
Besides fading, is Betelgeuse changing its appearance? Yes. The famous red supergiant star in the familiar constellation of Orion is so large that telescopes on Earth can actually…
NGC 2392: Double-Shelled Planetary Nebula
To some, this huge nebula resembles a person's head surrounded by a parka hood . In 1787, astronomer William Herschel discovered this unusual planetary nebula: NGC 2392 . More…
Viewing discoveries from 10 March 2020 through 16 February 2020.