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.
Filaments of the Cygnus Loop
What lies at the edge of an expanding supernova? Subtle and delicate in appearance, these ribbons of shocked interstellar gas are part of a blast wave at the expanding edge of a…
Lightning over Colorado
Have you ever watched a lightning storm in awe? Join the crowd. Oddly, details about how lightning is produced remains a topic of research. What is known is that updrafts carry…
Moon Pairs and the Synodic Month
Observe the Moon each night and its visible sunlit portion will gradually change. In phases progressing from New Moon to Full Moon to New Moon again, a lunar cycle or synodic…
Moon over Andromeda
The Great Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda (also known as M31 ), a mere 2.5 million light-years distant , is the closest large spiral to our own Milky Way. Andromeda is visible to the…
Enceladus in Infrared
One of our Solar System's most tantalizing worlds, icy Saturnian moon Enceladus appears in these detailed hemisphere views from the Cassini spacecraft. In false color, the five…
ISS Transits Mars
Yes, but have you ever seen the space station do this? If you know when and where to look , watching the bright International Space Station (ISS) drift across your night sky is a…
Equinox in the Sky
Does the Sun set in the same direction every day? No, the direction of sunset depends on the time of the year. Although the Sun always sets approximately toward the west, on an…
Omega Sunrise
Capturing this sunrise required both luck and timing. First and foremost, precise timing was needed to capture a sailboat crossing right in front of a rising Sun . Additionally,…
Breaking Distant Light
In the distant universe, time appears to run slowly. Since time-dilated light appears shifted toward the red end of the spectrum ( redshifted ), astronomers are able to use…
Orion in Depth
Orion is a familiar constellation. The apparent positions of its stars in two dimensions create a well-known pattern on the bowl of planet Earth's night sky. Orion may not look…
Arp 78: Peculiar Galaxy in Aries
Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78 is found within the boundaries of the head strong constellation Aries , some 100 million light-years beyond the stars and nebulae of our Milky Way…
Solar Cycle 25 Has Begun
The general trend of monthly sunspot data now confirms that the minimum of the approximately 11 year cycle of solar activity occurred in December 2019, marking the start of Solar…
Gravel Ejected from Asteroid Bennu
Why does asteroid Bennu eject gravel into space? No one is sure. The discovery , occurring during several episodes by NASA 's visiting OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, was unexpected.…
Biomarker Phosphine Discovered in the Atmosphere of Venus
Could there be life floating in the atmosphere of Venus? Although Earth's planetary neighbor has a surface considered too extreme for any known lifeform, Venus' upper atmosphere…
Corn Moon Rising
A rising moon can be a dramatic sight. A rising Full Corn Moon was captured early this month in time-lapse with a telephoto lens from nearly 30 kilometers away -- making Earth's…
M2-9: Wings of a Butterfly Nebula
Are stars better appreciated for their art after they die? Actually, stars usually create their most artistic displays as they die. In the case of low-mass stars like our Sun and…
A Thousand Meteors
Over a thousand meteors flash through the night in this intriguing timelapse video. Starting in April 2019 the individual video frames were selected from 372 relatively clear…
The Reappearance of Mars
Mars reappears just beyond the Moon's dark limb in this stack of sharp video frames captured on September 6. Of course to reappear it had to disappear in the first place . It did…
Jupiter's Swimming Storm
A bright storm head with a long turbulent wake swims across Jupiter in these sharp telescopic images of the Solar System's ruling gas giant . Captured on August 26, 28, and…
Pleiades: The Seven Sisters Star Cluster
Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the…
GW190521: Unexpected Black Holes Collide
How do black holes like this form? The two black holes that spiraled together to produce the gravitational wave event GW190521 were not only the most massive black holes ever seen…
The Milky Way over St Michael's Mount
Where do land and sky converge? On every horizon -- but in this case the path on the ground leads to St Michael's Mount (Cornish: Karrek Loos yn Koos), a small historic island in…
M1: The Crab Nebula from Hubble
This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula , the result of a supernova seen in 1054 AD , is filled with mysterious filaments. The filaments are not only…
A Falcon 9 Moon
Illuminating planet Earth's night, full moons can have many names. This year the last full moon of northern hemisphere summer was on September 2, known to some as the Full Corn…
Viewing discoveries from 28 September 2020 through 5 September 2020.