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.
Windblown NGC 3199
NGC 3199 lies about 12,000 light-years away, a glowing cosmic cloud in the nautical southern constellation of Carina . The nebula is about 75 light-years across in this…
STEVE over Copper Harbor
What creates STEVEs? Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancements (STEVEs) have likely been seen since antiquity, but only in the past five years has it been realized that their…
Space Station, Solar Prominences, Sun
That's no sunspot. It's the International Space Station (ISS) caught passing in front of the Sun. Sunspot s, individually, have a dark central umbra , a lighter surrounding…
Apollo 11: Earth, Moon, Spaceship
After the most famous voyage of modern times, it was time to go home. After proving that humanity has the ability to go beyond the confines of planet Earth , the first humans to…
Clouds of the Carina Nebula
What forms lurk in the mists of the Carina Nebula? The dark ominous figures are actually molecular clouds , knots of molecular gas and dust so thick they have become opaque . In…
Perseverance from Ingenuity
Flying at an altitude of 5 meters (just over 16 feet), on April 25 the Ingenuity helicopter snapped this sharp image. On its second flight above the surface of Mars, its color…
Pink and the Perigee Moon
On April 25 a nearly full moon rose just before sunset. Welcomed in a clear blue sky and framed by cherry blossoms, its familiar face was captured in this snapshot from Leith,…
Apollo 17: The Crescent Earth
Our fair planet sports a curved, sunlit crescent against the black backdrop of space in this stunning photograph. From the unfamiliar perspective, the Earth is small and, like a…
North Star: Polaris and Surrounding Dust
Why is Polaris called the North Star? First, Polaris is the nearest bright star toward the north spin axis of the Earth. Therefore, as the Earth turns, stars appear to revolve…
Animation: Black Hole Destroys Star
What happens if a star gets too close to a black hole? The black hole can rip it apart -- but how? It's not the high gravitational attraction itself that's the problem -- it's the…
A Sagittarius Triplet
These three bright nebulae are often featured on telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way . In fact, 18th century…
Planetary Nebula Mz3: The Ant Nebula
Why isn't this ant a big sphere? Planetary nebula Mz3 is being cast off by a star similar to our Sun that is, surely, round. Why then would the gas that is streaming away create…
Streak and Plume from SpaceX Crew-2 Launch
What's happening in the sky? The pre-dawn sky first seemed relatively serene yesterday morning over Indian Harbor Beach in Florida, USA. But then it lit up with a rocket launch.…
Flying Over the Earth at Night II
Recorded during 2017, timelapse sequences from the International Space Station are compiled in this serene video of planet Earth at Night. Fans of low Earth orbit can start by…
Planet Earth at Twilight
No sudden, sharp boundary marks the passage of day into night in this gorgeous view of ocean and clouds over our fair planet Earth . Instead, the shadow line or terminator is…
Centaurus A's Warped Magnetic Fields
When galaxies collide -- what happens to their magnetic fields ? To help find out, NASA pointed SOFIA , its flying 747, at galactic neighbor Centaurus A to observe the emission of…
Ingenuity: First Flight over Mars
What's the best way to explore Mars? Perhaps there is no single best way, but a newly demonstrated method shows tremendous promise: flight. Powered flight has the promise to…
The Galactic Center in Infrared
What does the center of our galaxy look like? In visible light, the Milky Way's center is hidden by clouds of obscuring dust and gas. But in this stunning vista , the Spitzer…
Rainbow Airglow over the Azores
Why would the sky glow like a giant repeating rainbow? Airglow . Now air glows all of the time, but it is usually hard to see. A disturbance however -- like an approaching storm…
Inside the Flame Nebula
The Flame Nebula is a stand out in optical images of the dusty, crowded star forming regions toward Orion's belt and the easternmost belt star Alnitak, a mere 1,400 light-years…
The Doubly Warped World of Binary Black Holes
Light rays from accretion disks around a pair of orbiting supermassive black holes make their way through the warped space-time produced by extreme gravity in this stunning…
The Galaxy, the Jet, and a Famous Black Hole
Bright elliptical galaxy Messier 87 (M87) is home to the supermassive black hole captured by planet Earth's Event Horizon Telescope in the first ever image of a black hole. Giant…
The Pencil Nebula Supernova Shock Wave
This supernova shock wave plows through interstellar space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Near the middle and moving up in this sharply detailed color composite , thin,…
Confirmed Muon Wobble Remains Unexplained
How fast do elementary particles wobble? A surprising answer to this seemingly inconsequential question came out of Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York , USA in 2001, and…
Viewing discoveries from 6 May 2021 through 13 April 2021.