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.
A Full Circle Rainbow over Norway
Have you ever seen an entire rainbow? From the ground, typically, only the top portion of a rainbow is visible because directions toward the ground have fewer raindrops. From the…
NGC 6164: Dragon's Egg Nebula and Halo
The star at the center created everything. Known as the Dragon's Egg , this star -- a rare, hot, luminous O-type star some 40 times as massive as the Sun -- created not only the…
Geminids and the Mittens
Asteroid 3200 Phaethon's annual gift to planet Earth always arrives in December . Otherwise known as the Geminid meteor shower, the source of the meteroid stream is dust shed…
Comet 2022 E3 (ZTF)
Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was discovered by astronomers using the wide-field survey camera at the Zwicky Transient Facility this year in early March. Since then the new long-period…
Cassini Looks Out from Saturn
This is what Saturn looks like from inside the rings. In 2017, for the first time , NASA directed the Cassini spacecraft to swoop between Saturn and its rings. During the dive ,…
NGC 1365: Majestic Island Universe
Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the faint but heated…
Sun Halo at Sixty-three Degrees North
Happy Solstice! Today is the December solstice , marking an astronomical beginning of summer in the southern hemisphere and winter in the north. On its yearly trek through planet…
Thor's Helmet
Thor not only has his own day (Thursday), but a helmet in the heavens. Popularly called Thor's Helmet, NGC 2359 is a hat-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages. Heroically…
The Tadpole Nebula in Gas and Dust
What's causing the commotion in the Tadpole Nebula? Star formation. Dusty emission in the Tadpole Nebula, IC 410, lies about 12,000 light-years away in the northern constellation…
25 Brightest Stars in the Night Sky
Do you know the names of some of the brightest stars? It's likely that you do, even though some bright star s have names so old they date back to near the beginning of written…
Apollo 17 VIP Site Anaglyph
Get out your red/blue glasses and check out this stereo scene from Taurus-Littrow valley on the Moon! The color anaglyph features a detailed 3D view of Apollo 17's Lunar Rover in…
The Geminid
Returning from beyond the Moon , on December 11 the Orion spacecraft entered Earth's atmosphere at almost 11 kilometers per second. That's half the speed of the grain of dust that…
Full Moon, Full Mars
On December 8 a full Moon and a full Mars were close, both bright and opposite the Sun in planet Earth's sky. In fact Mars was occulted, passing behind the Moon when viewed from…
Lunar Dust and Duct Tape
Why is the Moon so dusty? On Earth, rocks are weathered by wind and water, creating soil and sand. On the Moon, the history of constant micrometeorite bombardment has blasted away…
An Artful Sky over Lofoten Islands
Can the night sky be both art and science? If so, perhaps the featured image is an example. The digital panorama was composed of 10 landscape and 10 sky images all taken on the…
An Unusual Globule in IC 1396
Is there a monster in IC 1396 ? Known to some as the Elephant's Trunk Nebula , parts of gas and dust clouds of this star formation region may appear to take on foreboding forms,…
Io in True Color
The strangest moon in the Solar System is bright yellow. The featured picture , an attempt to show how Io would appear in the “true colors” perceptible to the average human eye,…
America and the Sea of Serenity
Get out your red/blue glasses and check out this stereo view of another world. Fifty years ago the scene was recorded by Apollo 17 mission commander Eugene Cernan on December 11,…
Mars Rises above the Lunar Limb
On the night of December 7 Mars wandered near the Full Moon. In fact the Red Planet was occulted, passing behind the Moon, when viewed from locations across Europe and North…
Orion and the Ocean of Storms
A camera on board the uncrewed Orion spacecraft captured this view on December 5 as Orion approached its return powered flyby of the Moon. Below one of Orion's extended solar…
NGC 7293: The Helix Nebula
A mere seven hundred light years from Earth, toward the constellation Aquarius , a sun-like star is dying. The dying star's last few thousand years have produced the Helix Nebula…
M16: A Star Forming Pillar from Webb
What's happening inside this interstellar mountain? Stars are forming. The mountain is actually a column of gas and dust in the picturesque Eagle Nebula (M16). A pillar like this…
Pleiades: The Seven Sisters Star Cluster
Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the…
Video: Powers of Ten
How different does the universe look on very small scales? On very large scales? The most famous short science film of its generation gives breathtaking comparisons. That film,…
Viewing discoveries from 27 December 2022 through 4 December 2022.