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.
Planetary Alignment over Italy
It is not a coincidence that planets line up. That's because all of the planets orbit the Sun in (nearly) a single sheet called the plane of the ecliptic . When viewed from inside…
Stephan's Quintet
The first identified compact galaxy group, Stephan's Quintet is featured in this eye-catching image constructed with data drawn from the extensive Hubble Legacy Archive . About…
Geminid of the North
An arid expanse of the Tengger Desert in north-central China, planet Earth fills the foreground of this starry scene. A widefield panoramic view, it was recorded shortly after…
Geminids of the South
Fireflies flash along a moonlit countryside in this scene taken on the night of December 13/14 from southern Uruguay, planet Earth. On that night meteors fell in the partly cloudy…
Comet Leonard from Space
What does Comet Leonard look like from space? Today's featured image from Origin.Space 's Yangwang-1 space telescope shows not only the currently bright comet -- but several other…
HH 666: Carina Dust Pillar with Jet
To some, it may look like a beehive . In reality, the featured image from the Hubble Space Telescope captures a cosmic pillar of dust, over two- light years long, inside of which…
Meteors and Auroras over Iceland
What's going on behind that mountain? Quite a bit. First of all, the mountain itself, named Kirkjufell , is quite old and located in western Iceland near the town of…
Comet Leonard Before Star Cluster M3
Comet Leonard is now visible to the unaided eye -- but just barely. Passing nearest to the Earth today, the comet is best seen this week soon after sunset, toward the west, low on…
Postcard from the South Pole
From this vantage point about three quarters of a mile from planet Earth's geographic South Pole, the December 4 eclipse of the Sun was seen as a partial eclipse. At maximum the…
Eclipse on a Polar Day
During polar day , in Arctic and Antarctic summer, the Sun stays above the horizon for periods of 24 hours or more. Recorded on December 4, this fisheye timelapse image tracks the…
A Total Eclipse of the Sun
Few were able to stand in the Moon's shadow and watch the December 4 total eclipse of the Sun. Determined by celestial mechanics and not geographical boundaries, the narrow path…
Comet Hale-Bopp Over Val Parola Pass
Comet Hale-Bopp , the Great Comet of 1997, became much brighter than any surrounding stars. It was seen even over bright city lights . Away from city lights, however, it put on…
Ninety Gravitational Wave Spectrograms and Counting
Every time two massive black holes collide , a loud chirping sound is broadcast out into the universe in gravitational waves . Humanity has only had the technology to hear these…
Space Station Silhouette on the Moon
What's that unusual spot on the Moon? It's the International Space Station . Using precise timing, the Earth-orbiting space platform was photographed in front of a partially lit…
Total Solar Eclipse Below the Bottom of the World
Yesterday there was a total solar eclipse visible only at the end of the Earth. To capture the unusual phenomenon , airplanes took flight below the clouded seascape of Southern…
Iridescent by Moonlight
In this snapshot from November 18, the Full Moon was not far from Earth's shadow . In skies over Sicily the brightest lunar phase was eclipsed by passing clouds though. The full…
Comet Leonard and the Whale Galaxy
Sweeping through northern predawn skies, on November 24 Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1) was caught between two galaxies in this composite telescopic image . Sporting a greenish coma the…
NGC 6822: Barnard's Galaxy
Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral arms. But small galaxies form stars too,…
A Blue-Banded Blood Moon
What causes a blue band to cross the Moon during a lunar eclipse? The blue band is real but usually quite hard to see. The featured HDR image of last week's lunar eclipse, however…
In Motion: Uranus and Moons
What's that moving across the sky? A planet just a bit too faint to see with the unaided eye: Uranus. The gas giant out past Saturn was tracked earlier this month near opposition…
The Extraordinary Spiral in LL Pegasi
What created the strange spiral structure on the upper left? No one is sure, although it is likely related to a star in a binary star system entering the planetary nebula phase,…
A High Cliff on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko
This high cliff occurs not on a planet, not on a moon, but on a comet. It was discovered to be part of the dark nucleus of Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko (CG) by Rosetta , a robotic…
Messier 101
Big, beautiful spiral galaxy M101 is one of the last entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog, but definitely not one of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this…
Great Refractor and Lunar Eclipse
Rain clouds passed and the dome of the Lick Observatory's 36 inch Great Refractor opened on November 19. The historic telescope was pointed toward a partially eclipsed Moon.…
Viewing discoveries from 19 December 2021 through 26 November 2021.