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.
Milky Way Over Tunisia
That's no moon . On the ground, that's the Lars Homestead in Tunisia . And that's not just any galaxy. That's the central band of our own Milky Way galaxy . Last, that's not just…
Gaia: Here Comes the Sun
What would it look like to return home from outside our galaxy? Although designed to answer greater questions, data from ESA's robotic Gaia mission is helping to provide a…
Glory and Fog Bow
On a road trip up Mount Uludağ in Bursa province, Turkey these motorcyclists found themselves above low clouds and fog in late June. With the bright Sun directly behind them, the…
Mars Passing By
As Mars wanders through Earth's night, it passes about 5 degrees south of the Pleiades star cluster in this composite astrophoto. The skyview was constructed from a series of…
Comet Olbers over Kunetice Castle
A visitor to the inner solar system every 70 years or so, Comet 13P/Olbers reached its most recent perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun, on June 30. Now on a return voyage…
Leopard Spots on Martian Rocks
What is creating these unusual spots? Light-colored spots on Martian rocks , each surrounded by a dark border, were discovered earlier this month by NASA 's Perseverance Rover…
Arp 142: Interacting Galaxies from Webb
To some, it looks like a penguin. But to people who study the universe, it is an interesting example of two big galaxies interacting. Just a few hundred million years ago, the…
Milky Way over Uluru
What's happening above Uluru? A United Nations World Heritage Site , Uluru is an extraordinary 350-meter high mountain in central Australia that rises sharply from nearly flat…
Sun Dance
Sometimes, the surface of our Sun seems to dance. In the middle of 2012, for example, NASA's Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamic Observatory spacecraft imaged an impressive prominence that…
Saturn at the Moon's Edge
Saturn now rises before midnight in planet Earth's sky. On July 24, the naked-eye planet was in close conjunction, close on the sky , to a waning gibbous Moon. But from some…
Facing NGC 6946
From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy , we see NGC 6946 face-on . The big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located just 20 million light-years away, behind a veil of…
NGC 7023: The Iris Nebula
These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus . Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke…
Exaggerated Moon
Our Moon doesn't really have craters this big. Earth's Moon , Luna, also doesn't naturally show this spikey texture, and its colors are more subtle. But this digital creation is…
The Crab Nebula from Visible to X-Ray
What powers the Crab Nebula? A city-sized magnetized neutron star spinning around 30 times a second. Known as the Crab Pulsar , it is the bright spot in the center of the gaseous…
Chamaeleon Dark Nebulas
Sometimes the dark dust of interstellar space has an angular elegance. Such is the case toward the far-south constellation of Chamaeleon . Normally too faint to see , dark dust is…
King of Wings Hoodoo under the Milky Way
This rock structure is not only surreal -- it's real. Perhaps the reason it's not more famous is that it is smaller than one might guess: the capstone rock overhangs only a few…
Apollo 11 Landing Panorama
Have you seen a panorama from another world lately? Assembled from high-resolution scans of the original film frames, this one sweeps across the magnificent desolation of the…
Anticrepuscular Rays at the Planet Festival
For some , these subtle bands of light and shadow stretched across the sky as the Sun set on July 11. Known as anticrepuscular rays, the bands are formed as a large cloud bank…
Messier 24: Sagittarius Star Cloud
Unlike most entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog of deep sky objects, M24 is not a bright galaxy, star cluster, or nebula. It's a gap in nearby, obscuring interstellar dust…
Villarrica Volcano Against the Sky
When Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, swings his blacksmith's hammer, the sky is lit on fire. A recent eruption of Chile's Villarrica volcano) shows the delicate interplay between…
Cometary Globules
What are these unusual interstellar structures? Bright-rimmed, flowing shapes gather near the center of this rich starfield toward the borders of the nautical southern…
The Tadpole Galaxy from Hubble
Why does this galaxy have such a long tail? In this stunning vista, based on image data from the Hubble Legacy Archive , distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted…
Meteor Misses Galaxy
The galaxy was never in danger. For one thing, the Triangulum galaxy (M33), pictured, is much bigger than the tiny grain of rock at the head of the meteor. For another, the galaxy…
Solar System Family Portrait
In 1990, cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back to make this first ever Solar System family portrait . The complete portrait is a 60 frame…
Viewing discoveries from 5 August 2024 through 13 July 2024.