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.
The Medusa Nebula
Braided and serpentine filaments of glowing gas suggest this nebula's popular name, The Medusa Nebula. Also known as Abell 21, this Medusa is an old planetary nebula some 1,500…
Arp 78: Peculiar Galaxy in Aries
Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78 is found within the boundaries of the head strong constellation Aries . Some 100 million light-years beyond the stars and nebulae of our Milky Way…
The Bubble Nebula from Hubble
Massive stars can blow bubbles. The featured image shows perhaps the most famous of all star-bubbles, NGC 7635, also known simply as The Bubble Nebula . Although it looks…
A Whale of an Aurora over Swedish Forest
What's that in the sky? An aurora. A large coronal mass ejection occurred on our Sun earlier this month, throwing a cloud of fast-moving electrons, protons, and ions toward the…
The Sky in 2021
What if you could see the entire sky -- all at once -- for an entire year? That, very nearly, is what is pictured here. Every 15 minutes during 2021, an all-sky camera took an…
A Picturesque Equinox Sunset
What's that at the end of the road? The Sun. Many towns have roads that run east - west, and on two days each year, the Sun rises and sets right down the middle . Today is one of…
2MASS J17554042+6551277
2MASS J17554042+6551277 doesn't exactly roll off the tongue but that's the name, a coordinate-based catalog designation, of the star centered in this sharp field of view. Fans of…
A Filament in Monoceros
Bluish reflection nebulae seem to fill this dusty expanse. The sharp telescopic frame spans over 1 degree on the sky toward the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros , the…
Centaurus A
A mere 11 million light-years away, Centaurus A is the closest active galaxy to planet Earth. Spanning over 60,000 light-years, the peculiar elliptical galaxy also known as NGC…
The Observable Universe
How far can you see? Everything you can see, and everything you could possibly see, right now, assuming your eyes could detect all types of radiations around you -- is the…
A Road to the Stars
Pictured -- a very scenic road to the stars. The road approaches La Silla Observatory in Chile , with the ESO 's 3.6-meter telescope just up ahead. To the left are some…
Star Formation in the Eagle Nebula
Where do stars form? One place, star forming regions known as “EGGs”, are being uncovered at the end of this giant pillar of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula (M16). Short for…
Colorful Airglow Bands Surround Milky Way
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…
Point Reyes Milky Way
Northern winter constellations and a long arc of the Milky Way are setting in this night skyscape looking toward the Pacific Ocean from Point Reyes on planet Earth's California…
When Rainbows Smile
Want to see a rainbow smile? Look near the zenith (straight up) when the sun is low in the sky and you might. This example of an ice halo known as a circumzenithal arc was…
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…
Viewing discoveries from 25 March 2022 through 2 March 2022.