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.
Rocket Eclipse at Sunset
Shockwaves ripple across the glare as a launch eclipses the setting Sun in this exciting close-up . Captured on September 17, the roaring Falcon 9 rocket carried European Galileo…
Stellar Streams in the Local Universe
The twenty galaxies arrayed in these panels are part of an ambitious astronomical survey of tidal stellar streams. Each panel presents a composite view; a deep, inverted image…
The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
In 1716 , English astronomer Edmond Halley noted, “This is but a little Patch, but it shows itself to the naked Eye, when the Sky is serene and the Moon absent.” Of course, M13 is…
Comet A3 Through an Australian Sunrise
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is now visible in the early morning sky. Diving into the inner Solar System at an odd angle , this large dirty iceberg will pass its closest to the Sun --…
NGC 6727: The Rampaging Baboon Nebula
This dusty region is forming stars. Part of a sprawling molecular cloud complex that resembles , to some, a rampaging baboon , the region is a relatively close by 500 light-years…
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS Approaches
What will happen as this already bright comet approaches? Optimistic predictions have Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) briefly becoming easily visible to the unaided eye --…
Chicagohenge: Equinox in an Aligned City
Chicago, in a way, is like a modern Stonehenge . The way is east to west, and the time is today. Today, and every equinox , the Sun will set exactly to the west, everywhere on…
Sunrise Shadows in the Sky
The defining astronomical moment of this September's equinox is at 12:44 UTC on September 22, when the Sun crosses the celestial equator moving south in its yearly journey through…
A Hazy Harvest Moon
For northern hemisphere dwellers, September's Full Moon was the Harvest Moon . On September 17/18 the sunlit lunar nearside passed into shadow, just grazing Earth's umbra, the…
The Dark Seahorse of Cepheus
Spanning light-years, this suggestive shape known as the Seahorse Nebula floats in silhouette against a rich, luminous background of stars. Seen toward the royal northern…
The Mermaid Nebula Supernova Remnant
New stars are born from the remnants of dead star s. The gaseous remnant of the gravitational collapse and subsequent death of a very massive star in our Milky Way created the…
Melotte 15 in the Heart Nebula
Cosmic clouds form fantastic shapes in the central regions of emission nebula IC 1805. The clouds are sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from massive hot stars in the…
Mercury's Vivaldi Crater from BepiColombo
Why does this large crater on Mercury have two rings and a smooth floor? No one is sure. The unusual feature called Vivaldi Crater spans 215 kilometers and was imaged again in…
Find the Man in the Moon
Have you ever seen the Man in the Moon? This common question plays on the ability of humans to see pareidolia -- imagining familiar icons where they don't actually exist. The…
The Moona Lisa
Only natural colors of the Moon in planet Earth's sky appear in this creative visual presentation. Arranged as pixels in a framed image, the lunar disks were photographed at…
Aurora Australis and the International Space Station
This snapshot from the International Space Station was taken on August 11 while orbiting about 430 kilometers above the Indian Ocean, Southern Hemisphere, planet Earth . The…
Young Star Cluster NGC 1333
This spectacular mosaic of images from the James Webb Space Telescope peers into the heart of young star cluster NGC 1333. A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the heroic…
A Night Sky over the Tatra Mountains
A natural border between Slovakia and Poland is the Tatra Mountains . A prominent destination for astrophotographers, the Tatras are the highest mountain range in the Carpathians…
Horsehead and Orion Nebulas
The dark Horsehead Nebula and the glowing Orion Nebula are contrasting cosmic vistas. Adrift 1,500 light-years away in one of the night sky's most recognizable constellation s,…
Mars: Moon, Craters, and Volcanos
If you could fly over Mars, what might you see? The featured image shows exactly this in the form of a Mars Express vista captured over a particularly interesting region on Mars…
M31: The Andromeda Galaxy
The most distant object easily visible to the unaided eye is M31 , the great Andromeda Galaxy . Even at some two and a half million light-year s distant, this immense spiral…
Small Moon Deimos
Mars has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos , named for the figures in Greek mythology Fear and Panic. Detailed surface views of smaller moon Deimos are shown in both these panels.…
Ringed Ice Giant Neptune
Ringed ice giant Neptune lies near the center of this sharp near-infrared image from the James Webb Space Telescope . The dim and distant world is the farthest planet from the Sun…
NGC 247 and Friends
About 70,000 light-years across, NGC 247 is a spiral galaxy smaller than our Milky Way. Measured to be only 11 million light-years distant it is nearby though. Tilted nearly…
Viewing discoveries from 28 September 2024 through 5 September 2024.