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.
Dueling Bands in the Night
What are these two bands in the sky? The more commonly seen band is the one on the right and is the central band of our Milky Way galaxy . Our Sun orbits in the disk of this…
Direct Projection: The Moon in My Hands
You don't have to look through a telescope to know where it's pointing. Allowing the telescope to project its image onto a large surface can be useful because it dilutes the…
Earthrise 1: Historic Image Remastered
“Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! Here's the Earth coming up. Wow is that pretty!” Soon after that pronouncement , about 53 years ago, one of the most famous images…
Nearby Spiral Galaxy NGC 4945
Large spiral galaxy NGC 4945 is seen nearly edge-on in this cosmic galaxy close-up. It's almost the size of our Milky Way Galaxy . NGC 4945's own dusty disk, young blue star…
Perseverance Sol 354
This Navcam mosaic from Perseverance looks out over the car-sized rover's deck, across the floor of Jezero crater on Mars. Frames used to construct the mosaic view were captured…
Beautiful Albireo AB
Beta Cygni is a single bright star to the naked eye. About 420 light-years away it marks the foot of the Northern Cross, famous asterism in the constellation Cygnus. But a view…
Orion over Green Bank
What will the huge Green Bank Telescope discover tonight? Pictured, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) on the lower right is the largest fully-pointable single-dish…
Illustration: An Early Quasar
What did the first quasars look like? The nearest quasar s are now known to involve supermassive black hole s in the centers of active galaxies . Gas and dust that falls toward a…
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 6217
Many spiral galaxies have bars across their centers. Even our own Milky Way Galaxy is thought to have a modest central bar . Prominently barred spiral galaxy NGC 6217, featured…
Aurora Over White Dome Geyser
Sometimes both heaven and Earth erupt. Colorful auroras erupted unexpectedly a few years ago, with green aurora appearing near the horizon and brilliant bands of red aurora…
Peculiar Galaxies of Arp 273
The spiky stars in the foreground of this backyard telescopic frame are well within our own Milky Way Galaxy . But the two eye-catching galaxies lie far beyond the Milky Way, at a…
Three Clusters in Puppis
Galactic or open star clusters are young. The swarms of stars are born together near the plane of the Milky Way, but their numbers steadily dwindle as cluster members are ejected…
Chamaeleon I Molecular Cloud
Dark markings and bright nebulae in this telescopic southern sky view are telltale signs of young stars and active star formation . They lie a mere 650 light-years away, at the…
Eiffel Tower Prominence on the Sun
What's that on the Sun? Although it may look like a flowing version of the Eiffel Tower, it is a solar prominence that is actually much bigger -- about the height of Jupiter. The…
Terminator Moon
What's different about this Moon? It's the terminator s. In the featured image, you can't directly see any terminator -- the line that divides the light of day from the dark of…
In the Heart of the Heart Nebula
What excites the Heart Nebula? First, the large emission nebula dubbed IC 1805 looks, in whole, like a human heart . Its shape perhaps fitting of the Valentine's Day , this heart…
Earth at Night
This is what the Earth looks like at night. Can you find your favorite country or city ? Surprisingly, city lights make this task quite possible. Human-made lights highlight…
Aurora by Moonlight
The ice was singing as light from a bright gibbous Moon cast shadows across this frozen lake , about 20 kilometers north of Stockholm, Sweden, planet Earth. In the alluring night…
IC 342: The Hidden Galaxy in Camelopardalis
Similar in size to large, bright spiral galaxies in our neighborhood, IC 342 is a mere 10 million light-years distant in the long-necked, northern constellation Camelopardalis . A…
T Tauri and Hind's Variable Nebula
The star with an orange tint near top center in this dusty telescopic frame is T Tauri, prototype of the class of T Tauri variable stars. Next to it (right) is a yellow cosmic…
Eta Car: 3D Model of the Most Dangerous Star Known
What's the most dangerous star near earth? Many believe it's Eta Carinae, a binary star system about 100 times the mass of the Sun, just 10,000 light years from earth. Eta Carinae…
Aurora and Light Pillars over Norway
Which half of this sky is your favorite? On the left, the night sky is lit up by particles expelled from the Sun that later collided with Earth's upper atmosphere — creating…
NGC 4651: The Umbrella Galaxy
It's raining stars. What appears to be a giant cosmic umbrella is now known to be a tidal stream of stars stripped from a small satellite galaxy . The main galaxy, spiral galaxy…
Blue Marble Earth
Welcome to planet Earth, the third planet from a star named the Sun. The Earth is shaped like a sphere and composed mostly of rock. Over 70 percent of the Earth's surface is…
Viewing discoveries from 1 March 2022 through 6 February 2022.