Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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A Solar Prominence Eruption from SDO
One of the most spectacular solar sights is an erupting prominence. In 2011, NASA's Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamic Observatory spacecraft imaged an impressively large prominence…
Sky Full of Arcs
On August 11 a Rocket Lab Electron rocket launched from a rotating planet. With a small satellite on board its mission was dubbed A Sky Full of SARs (Synthetic Aperture Radar…
Meteor Borealis
A single exposure made with a camera pointed almost due north on August 12 recorded this bright Perseid meteor in the night sky west of Halifax, Nova Scotia , Canada. The meteor's…
Late Night Vallentuna
Bright Mars and even brighter Jupiter are in close conjunction just above the pine trees in this post-midnight skyscape from Vallentuna , Sweden. Taken on August 12 during a…
Meteors and Aurora over Germany
This was an unusual night. For one thing, the night sky of August 11 and 12, earlier this week, occurred near the peak of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower . Therefore, meteors…
Giant Jet from the International Space Station
What's that on the horizon? When circling the Earth on the International Space Station early last month , astronaut Matthew Dominick saw an unusual type of lightning just beyond…
Perseid Meteors over Stonehenge
What's happening in the sky above Stonehenge? A meteor shower: specifically, the Perseid meteor shower . A few nights ago, after the sky darkened , many images of meteors from…
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Animation: Perseid Meteor Shower
Where do Perseid meteors come from? Mostly small bits of stony grit, Perseid meteoroids were once expelled from Comet Swift-Tuttle and continue to follow this comet's orbit as…
The Light, Dark, and Dusty Trifid
Messier 20 , popularly known as the Trifid Nebula, lies about 5,000 light-years away toward the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. A star forming region in the plane of our…
A Perseid Below
Denizens of planet Earth typically watch meteor showers by looking up . But this remarkable view , captured on August 13, 2011 by astronaut Ron Garan, caught a Perseid meteor by…
Periodic Comet Swift-Tuttle
A Halley-type comet with an orbital period of about 133 years, Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle is recognized as the parent of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. The comet's last visit to…
Milky Way Behind Three Merlons
To some, they look like battlements, here protecting us against the center of the Milky Way . The Three Merlon s, also called the Three Peaks of Lavaredo , stand tall today…
Storm Cloud Over Texas
What makes this storm cloud so colorful? First, the cloud itself is composed of millions of tiny droplets of water and ice. Its bottom is almost completely flat -- but this isn't…
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…
Viewing discoveries from 18 August 2024 through 26 July 2024.