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.
Blue Ghost to the Moon
With spacecraft thrusters at top center, the rugged surface of the Moon lies below the Blue Ghost lander in this space age video frame. The view of the lunar far side was captured…
Athena to the Moon
Planet Earth hangs in the background of this space age selfie. The snapshot was captured by the IM-2 Nova-C lander Athena , just after stage separation following its February 26…
Open Star Clusters M35 and NGC 2158
Framed in this single, starry, telescopic field of view are two open star clusters, M35 and NGC 2158. Located within the boundaries of the constellation Gemini, they do appear to…
Einstein Ring Surrounds Nearby Galaxy Center
Do you see the ring? If you look very closely at the center of the featured galaxy NGC 6505 , a ring becomes evident. It is the gravity of NGC 6505 , the nearby ( z = 0.042)…
M41: The Little Beehive Star Cluster
Why are there so many bright blue stars? Stars are usually born in clusters , and the brightest and most massive of these stars typically glow blue. Less-bright, non-blue stars…
Light Pillar over Erupting Etna
Can a lava flow extend into the sky? No, but light from the lava flow can. One effect is something quite unusual -- a volcanic light pillar . More typically, light pillars are…
Saturn in Infrared from Cassini
Saturn looks slightly different in infrared light. Bands of clouds show great structure, including long stretching storms . Also quite striking in infrared is the unusual…
Rima Hyginus
Rima Hyginus is a spectacular fissure , some 220 kilometers long, found near the center of the lunar near side . Easy to spot in telescopic views of the Moon, it stretches top…
Hubble's Andromeda Galaxy Mosaic
The largest photomosaic ever assembled from Hubble Space Telescope image data is a panoramic view of our neighboring spiral Andromeda Galaxy. With 600 overlapping frames assembled…
Messier 87
Enormous elliptical galaxy Messier 87 is about 50 million light-years away. Also known as NGC 4486, the giant galaxy holds trillions of stars compared to the mere billions of…
HH 30: A Star System with Planets Now Forming
How do stars and planets form? New clues have been found in the protoplanetary system Herbig-Haro 30 by the James Webb Space Telescope in concert with Hubble and the Earth-bound…
Thor's Helmet versus the Seagull
Seen as a seagull and a duck, these nebulae are not the only cosmic clouds to evoke images of flight. But both are winging their way across this broad celestial landscape,…
SpaceX Rocket Launch Plume over California
What's happened to the sky? Last Monday, the photogenic launch plume from a SpaceX rocket launch created quite a spectacle over parts of southern California and Arizona . Looking…
Parhelia at Abisko
Three suns seem to hug the horizon in this otherworldly winterscape. But the evocative scene was captured during a February 3rd snowmobile exploration of the mountainous region…
A Cosmic Rose: NGC 2237 in Monoceros
The Rosette Nebula, NGC 2237, is not the only cosmic cloud of gas and dust to evoke the imagery of flowers , but it is probably the most famous. At the edge of a large molecular…
Reflections on VdB 31
Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful, blue VdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae . It shares this well-composed…
The Spider and the Fly
Will the spider ever catch the fly? Not if both are large emission nebulas toward the constellation of the Charioteer ( Auriga ). The spider -shaped gas cloud in the image center…
Auroral Hummingbird over Norway
Is this the largest hummingbird ever? Although it may look like a popular fluttering nectarivore , what is pictured is actually a beautifully detailed and colorful aurora ,…
Milky Way over the Australian Pinnacles
What strange world is this? E a r t h . In the foreground of the featured image are the Pinnacles , unusual rock spires in Nambung National Park in Western Australia . Made of…
A Conjunction of Crescents
A waxing crescent Moon and a waning crescent Venus are found at opposite corners of this twilight telephoto field of view . The close conjunction of the two brightest celestial…
LEDA 1313424: The Bullseye Galaxy
The giant galaxy cataloged as LEDA 1313424 is about two and a half times the size of our own Milky Way. Its remarkable appearance in this recently released Hubble Space Telescope…
IC 2574: Coddington's Nebula
Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral arms. But small, irregular galaxies form…
Anticrepuscular Rays: A Rainbow Fan over Spain
Yes, but can your rainbow do this? Late in the day, the Sun set as usual toward the west. However, on this day, the more interesting display was 180 degrees around -- toward the…
Wolf-Rayet Star 124: Stellar Wind Machine
Some stars explode in slow motion. Rare, massive Wolf-Rayet stars are so tumultuous and hot that they are slowly disintegrating right before our telescopes. Glowing gas globs each…
Viewing discoveries from 1 March 2025 through 3 February 2025.