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 Triple View of Comet ZTF
Comet ZTF has a distinctive shape. The now bright comet visiting the inner Solar System has been showing not only a common dust tail , ion tail , and green gas coma, but also an…
Globular Star Cluster NGC 6355 from Hubble
Globular clusters once ruled the Milky Way . Back in the old days , back when our Galaxy first formed, perhaps thousands of globular clusters roamed our Galaxy . Today, there are…
Barnard 68: Dark Molecular Cloud
Where did all the stars go? What used to be considered a hole in the sky is now known to astronomers as a dark molecular cloud. Here, a high concentration of dust and molecular…
Comet ZTF over Mount Etna
Comet-like plumes are blowing over the volcanic peaks of Mount Etna in this wintry mountain-and-skyscape from planet Earth. The stacked and blended combination of individual…
Comet ZTF: Orbital Plane Crossing
The current darling of the northern night , Comet C/2022 E3 ZTF is captured in this telescopic image from a dark sky location at June Lake, California, USA. Of course Comet ZTF…
Active Galaxy NGC 1275
Active galaxy NGC 1275 is the central, dominant member of the large and relatively nearby Perseus Cluster of Galaxies . Wild-looking at visible wavelengths, the active galaxy is…
LDN 1622: The Boogeyman Nebula
To some, the dark shape looks like a mythical boogeyman . Scientifically, Lynds' Dark Nebula ( LDN ) 1622 appears against a faint background of glowing hydrogen gas only visible…
LHS 475 b: Earth-Sized Exoplanet
If you could stand on exoplanet LHS 475 b, what might you see? No one knows for sure but pictured here is an interesting guess made by an Earth-based artificial intelligence (AI)…
The Colliding Spiral Galaxies of Arp 274
Two galaxies are squaring off in Virgo and here are the latest pictures. When two galaxies collide , the stars that compose them usually do not. This is because galaxies are…
In Green Company: Aurora over Norway
Raise your arms if you see an aurora. With those instructions, two nights went by with, well, clouds -- mostly. On the third night of returning to same peaks, though, the sky not…
Naked-eye Comet ZTF
Comet C/2022E3 (ZTF) no longer requires a telescope for viewing. By January 19, it could just be seen with the naked eye in this rural sky with little light pollution from a…
Galaxy Wars: M81 and M82
The two dominant galaxies near center are far far away, 12 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Great Bear. On the right, with grand spiral arms…
The Seagull Nebula
A broad expanse of glowing gas and dust presents a bird-like visage to astronomers from planet Earth , suggesting its popular moniker - The Seagull Nebula. Using narrowband image…
MACS0647: Gravitational Lensing of the Early Universe by Webb
Gravitational lensing by the galaxy cluster MACS0647 -- in which the massive foreground cluster distorts and lenses the light emitted by distant background galaxies along the line…
Unexpected Clouds Toward the Andromeda Galaxy
Why are there oxygen-emitting arcs near the direction of the Andromeda galaxy? No one is sure. The gas arcs, shown in blue, were discovered and first confirmed by amateur…
Moon Enhanced
Our Moon doesn't really look like this. Earth's Moon , Luna, doesn't naturally show this rich texture, and its colors are more subtle. But this digital creation is based on…
M1: The Crab Nebula from Hubble
This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula , the result of a supernova seen in 1054 AD , is filled with mysterious filaments. The filaments are not only…
Perihelion Sun 2023
Perihelion for 2023 , Earth's closest approach to the Sun, was on January 4 at 16:17 UTC. That was less than 24 hours after this sharp image of the Sun's disk was recorded with…
Young Star Cluster NGC 346
The most massive young star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud is NGC 346, embedded in our small satellite galaxy's largest star forming region some 210,000 light-years…
Stardust in Perseus
This cosmic expanse of dust, gas, and stars covers some 6 degrees on the sky in the heroic constellation Perseus. At upper left in the gorgeous skyscape is the intriguing young…
Spiral Aurora over Iceland
The scene may look like a fantasy, but it's really Iceland . The rock arch is named Gatklettur and located on the island's northwest coast. Some of the larger rocks in the…
NGC 2264: The Cone Nebula
Stars are forming in the gigantic dust pillar called the Cone Nebula. Cones, pillars , and majestic flowing shapes abound in stellar nurseries where clouds of gas and dust are…
Tails of Comet ZTF
Comet ZTF may become visible to the unaided eye. Discovered early last year, this massive snowball has been brightening as it approaches the Sun and the Earth. C/2022 E3 (ZTF)…
Where Your Elements Came From
The hydrogen in your body, present in every molecule of water, came from the Big Bang . There are no other appreciable sources of hydrogen in the universe. The carbon in your body…
Viewing discoveries from 31 January 2023 through 8 January 2023.