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.
NGC 4565: Galaxy on Edge
Is our Milky Way Galaxy this thin? Magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4565 is viewed edge-on from planet Earth. Also known as the Needle Galaxy for its narrow profile, bright NGC 4565…
NGC 602 and Beyond
The clouds may look like an oyster, and the stars like pearls, but look beyond. Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud , a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years…
The Southern Cliff in the Lagoon
Undulating bright ridges and dusty clouds cross this close-up of the nearby star forming region M8 , also known as the Lagoon Nebula . A sharp, false-color composite of narrow…
M104: The Sombrero Galaxy
A gorgeous spiral galaxy, M104 is famous for its nearly edge-on profile featuring a broad ring of obscuring dust lanes. Seen in silhouette against an extensive central bulge of…
The Comet, the Whale, and the Hockey Stick
Closest to the Sun on March 1, and closest to planet Earth on April 23, this Comet ATLAS (C/2020 R4) shows a faint greenish coma and short tail in this pretty, telescopic field of…
A Meteor and the Gegenschein
Is the night sky darkest in the direction opposite the Sun? No. In fact, a rarely discernable faint glow known as the gegenschein (German for “counter glow”) can be seen 180…
Lightning and Orion Beyond Uluru
What's happening behind Uluru? A United Nations World Heritage Site , Uluru is an extraordinary 350-meter high mountain in central Australia that rises sharply from nearly flat…
Star Clusters M35 and NGC 2158
Clusters of stars can be near or far, young or old, diffuse or compact. The featured image shows two quite contrasting open star clusters in the same field. M35 , on the lower…
Horsehead and Orion Nebulas
The dark Horsehead Nebula and the glowing Orion Nebula are contrasting cosmic vistas. Adrift 1,500 light-years away in one of the night sky's most recognizable constellations ,…
Deepscape at Yacoraite
In this evocative night scene a dusty central Milky Way rises over the ancient Andean archaeological site of Yacoraite in northwestern Argentina. The denizens of planet Earth…
Mercury-Redstone 3 Launch
Sixty years ago, near the dawn of the space age , NASA controllers “lit the candle” and sent Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard arcing into space atop a Redstone rocket. His cramped…
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.…
Viewing discoveries from 17 May 2021 through 24 April 2021.