Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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Globular Star Cluster 47 Tuc
Globular star cluster 47 Tucanae is a jewel of the southern sky. Also known as NGC 104 , it roams the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy along with some 200 other globular star clusters…
A Flower-Shaped Rock on Mars
It is one of the more unusual rocks yet found on Mars. Smaller than a penny, the rock has several appendages that make it look, to some, like a flower. Although it would be a…
Moon in Inverted Colors
Which moon is this? It's Earth's moon -- but in inverted colors. Here, the pixel values corresponding to light and dark areas have been translated in reverse, or inverted,…
A Lion in Orion
Yes, but can you see the lion? A deep exposure shows the famous dark indentation that looks like a horse's head, visible just left and below center, and known unsurprisingly as…
Venus and the Triply Ultraviolet Sun
This was a very unusual type of solar eclipse. Typically, it is the Earth's Moon that eclipses the Sun. In 2012, though, the planet Venus took a turn. Like a solar eclipse by the…
Interstellar Comet 2I Borisov
From somewhere else in the Milky Way galaxy, Comet 2I/Borisov was just visiting the Solar System. Discovered by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov on August 30, 2019, the first…
The Multiwavelength Crab
The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant ,…
Spiral Galaxy NGC 2841
A mere 46 million light-years distant, spiral galaxy NGC 2841 can be found in the northern constellation of Ursa Major . This deep view of the gorgeous island universe was…
Record Prominence Imaged by Solar Orbiter
What's happened to our Sun? Last month, it produced the largest prominence ever imaged together with a complete solar disk . The record image, featured , was captured in…
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…
Viewing discoveries from 10 March 2022 through 15 February 2022.