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.
Striped Sand Dunes on Mars
Why are these sand dunes on Mars striped? No one is sure. The featured image shows striped dunes in Kunowsky Crater on Mars, photographed recently with the Mars Reconnaissance…
The Small Cloud of Magellan
What is the Small Magellanic Cloud? It has turned out to be a galaxy. People who have wondered about this little fuzzy patch in the southern sky included Portuguese navigator…
Sprite Lightning at 100,000 Frames Per Second
What causes sprite lightning)? Mysterious bursts of light in the sky that momentarily resemble gigantic jellyfish have been recorded for over 30 years, but apart from a general…
A Phoenix Aurora over Iceland
All of the other aurora watchers had gone home. By 3:30 am in Iceland , on a quiet September night, much of that night's auroras had died down. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a new burst…
21st Century Wet Collodion Moon
In the mid 19th century, one of the first photographic technologies used to record the lunar surface was the wet-plate collodion process, notably employed by British astronomer…
Galaxies and the South Celestial Pole
The South Celestial Pole is easy to spot in star trail images of the southern sky. The extension of Earth's axis of rotation to the south, it's at the center of all the southern…
Trail of the Returner
Familiar stars of a northern winter's night shine in this night skyview, taken near Zhangye, Gansu, China and the border with Inner Mongolia. During the early hours of December 17…
Jupiter and Saturn Great Conjunction: The Movie
Yes, but have you seen a movie of Jupiter and Saturn's Great Conjunction? The featured time-lapse video was composed from a series of images taken from Thailand and shows the two…
Earth During a Total Solar Eclipse
What does the Earth look like during a total solar eclipse? It appears dark in the region where people see the eclipse, because that's where the shadow of the Moon falls. The…
M16: Inside the Eagle Nebula
From afar, the whole thing looks like an Eagle . A closer look at the Eagle Nebula , however, shows the bright region is actually a window into the center of a larger dark shell…
Cosmic Latte: The Average Color of the Universe
What color is the universe? More precisely, if the entire sky were smeared out, what color would the final mix be? This whimsical question came up when trying to determine what…
Fox Fur, Unicorn, and Christmas Tree
Clouds of glowing hydrogen gas fill this colorful skyscape in the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros , the Unicorn. A star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264 , the…
Northern Winter Night
Orion always seems to come up sideways on northern winter evenings . Those familiar stars of the constellation of the Hunter are caught above the trees in this colorful night…
Portrait of NGC 1055
Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 1055 is a dominant member of a small galaxy group a mere 60 million light-years away toward the aquatically intimidating constellation Cetus .…
Jupiter Meets Saturn: A Red Spotted Great Conjunction
It was time for their close-up . Two days ago Jupiter and Saturn passed a tenth of a degree from each other in what is known a Great Conjunction . Although the two planets pass…
Trifid Pillars and Jets
Dust pillars are like interstellar mountains . They survive because they are more dense than their surroundings, but they are being slowly eroded away by a hostile environment.…
Solstice: Sunrises Around the Year
Does the Sun always rise in the same direction? No. As the months change, the direction toward the rising Sun changes, too. The featured image shows the direction of sunrise every…
A Volcanic Great Conjunction
Where can I see the Great Conjunction? Near where the Sun just set. Directionally, this close passing of Jupiter and Saturn will be toward the southwest. Since the planetary pair,…
Conjunction after Sunset
How close will Jupiter and Saturn be at their Great Conjunction ? Consider this beautiful triple conjunction of Moon, Jupiter and Saturn captured through clouds in the wintry…
Diamond in the Sky
When the shadow of the Moon raced across planet Earth's southern hemisphere on December 14, sky watchers along the shadow's dark central path were treated to the only total solar…
Gemini's Meteors
Taken over the course of an hour shortly after local midnight on December 13, 35 exposures were used to create this postcard from Earth. The composited night scene spans dark…
Sonified: The Matter of the Bullet Cluster
What's the matter with the Bullet Cluster? This massive cluster of galaxies (1E 0657-558) creates gravitational lens distortions of background galaxies in a way that has been…
Great Conjunction: Saturn and Jupiter Converge
It's happening. Saturn and Jupiter are moving closer and will soon appear in almost exactly the same direction. Coincidentally, on the night of the December solstice -- the…
Capsule Returns from Asteroid Ryugu
The streak across the sky is a capsule returning from an asteroid. It returned earlier this month from the near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu carrying small rocks and dust from its…
Viewing discoveries from 6 January 2021 through 14 December 2020.