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.
Ganymede from Juno
What does the largest moon in the Solar System look like? Jupiter 's moon Ganymede , larger than even Mercury and Pluto , has an icy surface speckled with bright young craters…
LBN 86: The Eagle Ray Nebula
This eagle ray glides across a cosmic sea. Officially cataloged as SH2-63 and LBN 86 , the dark nebula is composed of gas and dust that just happens to appear shaped like a common…
A Dust Jet from the Surface of Comet 67P
Where do comet tails come from? There are no obvious places on the nuclei of comets from which the jets that create comet tails emanate. In 2016, though, ESA's Rosetta spacecraft…
Little Planet Aurora
Immersed in an eerie greenish light, this rugged little planet appears to be home to stunning water falls and an impossibly tall mountain. It's planet Earth of course. On the…
Stereo Jupiter near Opposition
Jupiter looks sharp in these two rooftop telescope images . Both were captured on November 17 from Singapore, planet Earth, about two weeks after Jupiter's 2023 opposition .…
Along the Taurus Molecular Cloud
The cosmic brush of star formation composed this interstellar canvas of emission, dust, and dark nebulae. A 5 degree wide telescopic mosaic, it frames a region found north of…
IC 342: 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…
Fleming's Triangular Wisp
These chaotic and tangled filaments of shocked, glowing gas are spread across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus as part of the Veil Nebula . The Veil Nebula…
The Horsehead Nebula
Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by chance has assumed this recognizable shape . Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula , it is some…
Space Station, Solar Prominences, Sun
That's no sunspot. It's the International Space Station (ISS) caught passing in front of the Sun. Sunspot s, individually, have a dark central umbra , a lighter surrounding…
Planet Earth from Orion
One year ago a Space Launch System rocket left planet Earth on November 16, 2022 at 1:47am EST carrying the Orion spacecraft on the Artemis I mission, the first integrated test of…
Nightlights in Qeqertaq
Light pollution is usually not a problem in Qeqertaq . In western Greenland the remote coastal village boasted a population of 114 in 2020. Lights still shine in its dark skies…
Daytime Moon Meets Morning Star
Venus now appears as Earth's brilliant morning star, shining above the southeastern horizon before dawn. For early morning risers, the silvery celestial beacon rose predawn in a…
M1: The Incredible Expanding Crab
Cataloged as M1, the Crab Nebula is the first on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets . In fact, the Crab Nebula is now known to be a supernova remnant, an…
Three Planets Rock
In the fading darkness before dawn, a tilted triangle appeared to balance atop a rock formation off the southern tip of Sicily . Making up the points of the triangle are three of…
Andromeda over the Alps
Have you ever seen the Andromeda galaxy? Although M31 appears as a faint and fuzzy blob to the unaided eye, the light you see will be over two million years old, making it likely…
Gibbous Moon beyond Swedish Mountain
This is a gibbous Moon. More Earthlings are familiar with a full moon, when the entire face of Luna is lit by the Sun , and a crescent moon , when only a sliver of the Moon's face…
The SAR Arc and the Milky Way
This broad, luminous red arc was a surprising visitor to partly cloudy evening skies over northern France. Captured extending toward the zenith in a west-to-east mosaic of images…
UHZ1: Distant Galaxy and Black Hole
Dominated by dark matter , massive cluster of galaxies Abell 2744 is known to some as Pandora's Cluster . It lies 3.5 billion light-years away toward the constellation Sculptor.…
M1: The Crab Nebula
The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous 18th century list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova…
Perseus Galaxy Cluster from Euclid
There's a new space telescope in the sky: Euclid . Equipped with two large panoramic cameras, Euclid captures light from the visible to the near- infrared . It took five hours of…
A Martian Dust Devil Spins By
It moved across the surface of Mars -- what was it? A dust devil. Such spinning columns of rising air are heated by the warm surface and are also common in warm and dry areas on…
Red Aurora over Italy
What was that red glow on the horizon last night? Aurora. Our unusually active Sun produced a surface explosion a few days ago that sent out a burst of electrons, protons, and…
Creature Aurora Over Norway
It was Halloween and the sky looked like a creature. Exactly which creature, the astrophotographer was unsure (but possibly you can suggest one ). Exactly what caused this eerie…
Viewing discoveries from 28 November 2023 through 5 November 2023.