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.
Comet ATLAS Breaks Up
Cruising through the inner solar system, Comet ATLAS (C/2019 Y4) has apparently fragmented . Multiple separate condensations within its diffuse coma are visible in this telescopic…
A Cosmic Triangle
It was an astronomical triple play. Setting on the left, just after sunset near the end of last month, was our Moon -- showing a bright crescent phase. Setting on the right was…
NGC 253: The Silver Coin Galaxy
NGC 253 is one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, but also one of the dustiest. Dubbed the Silver Coin for its appearance in smalltelescopes, it is more formally known as…
A Sailing Stone across Death Valley
How did this big rock end up on this strange terrain? One of the more unusual places here on Earth occurs inside Death Valley , California , USA . There a dried lakebed named…
The Horsehead Nebula in Infrared from Hubble
While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the…
Venus and the Pleiades in April
Shared around world in early April skies Venus, our brilliant evening star, wandered across the face of the lovely Pleiades star cluster. This timelapse image follows the path of…
Full Moon of Spring
From home this Full Moon looked bright . Around our fair planet it rose as the Sun set on April 7/8, the first Full Moon after the vernal equinox and the start of northern…
A Flow of Time
This surreal timelapse, landscape, panorama spans predawn, blue hour, and sunrise skies. Close to the start of planet Earth's northern hemisphere spring, the flow of time was…
Country Sky versus City Sky
Dark skies are disappearing from the world. With modernization comes artificial lighting that brightens the night. While these lights allow modern human s to see, much light is…
A Path North
What happens if you keep going north? The direction north on the Earth , the place on your horizon below the northern spin pole of the Earth -- around which other stars appear to…
NGC 1672: Barred Spiral Galaxy from Hubble
Many spiral galaxies have bars across their centers. Even our own Milky Way Galaxy is thought to have a modest central bar . Prominently barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672, featured…
Color the Universe
Wouldn't it be fun to color in the universe? If you think so, please accept this famous astronomical illustration as a preliminary substitute. You, your friends , your parents or…
Venus and the Sisters
After wandering about as far from the Sun on the sky as Venus can get, the brilliant evening star is crossing paths with the sister stars of the Pleiades cluster. Look west after…
The Traffic in Taurus
There's a traffic jam in Taurus lately. On April 1, this celestial frame from slightly hazy skies over Tapiobicske, Hungary recorded an impressive pile up toward the zodiacal…
Venus and the Pleiades in April
Venus is currently the brilliant evening star. Shared around world , in tonight's sky Venus will begin to wander across the face of the lovely Pleiades star cluster. This digital…
Asteroid or Potato?
Is this asteroid Arrokoth or a potato? Perhaps, after all the data was beamed back to Earth from NASA's robotic New Horizons spacecraft , the featured high resolution image of…
The Galactic Center from Radio to X-ray
In how many ways does the center of our Galaxy glow? This enigmatic region, about 26,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Archer ( Sagittarius ), glows in every…
The Colors of Saturn from Cassini
What creates Saturn's colors? The featured picture of Saturn only slightly exaggerates what a human would see if hovering close to the giant ringed world. The image was taken in…
A 212-Hour Exposure of Orion
The constellation of Orion is much more than three stars in a row. It is a direction in space that is rich with impressive nebulas. To better appreciate this well-known swath of…
Stars Trail over Ragusa
In trying times, stars still trail in the night . Taken on March 14, this night skyscape was made by combining 230 exposures each 15 seconds long to follow the stars' circular…
A Little Drop of Galaxy
A drop of water seems to hold an entire galaxy in this creative macro-astrophotograph . In the imaginative work of cosmic nature photography a close-up lens was used to image a…
Andromeda Station
This surreal picture isn't from a special effects sci-fi movie. It is a digital composite of frames of the real Andromeda Galaxy , also known as M31, rising over a real mountain.…
Star Forming Region S106
Massive star IRS 4 is beginning to spread its wings. Born only about 100,000 years ago, material streaming out from this newborn star has formed the nebula dubbed Sharpless 2-106…
A Black Hole Disrupts a Passing Star
What happens to a star that goes near a black hole? If the star directly impacts a massive black hole , then the star falls in completely -- and everything vanishes. More likely ,…
Viewing discoveries from 16 April 2020 through 24 March 2020.