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.
Rubin's Galaxy
In this Hubble Space Telescope image the bright, spiky stars lie in the foreground toward the heroic northern constellation Perseus and well within our own Milky Way galaxy. In…
Solar Eclipse
On April 20, 2023 the shadow of a New Moon raced across planet Earth's southern hemisphere. When viewed along a narrow path that mostly avoided landfall, the Moon in silhouette…
25 Brightest Stars in the Night Sky
Do you know the names of some of the brightest stars? It's likely that you do, even though some bright star s have names so old they date back to near the beginning of written…
Enceladus in True Color
Do oceans under the ice of Saturn's moon Enceladus contain life? A reason to think so involves long features -- some dubbed tiger stripes -- that are known to be spewing ice from…
Between Scylla and Charybdis: A Double Cosmic Discovery
Can you identify this celestial object? Likely not — because this is a discovery image . Massive stars forge heavy elements in their cores and, after a few million years, end…
Facing NGC 3344
From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy , we see NGC 3344 face-on. Nearly 40,000 light-year s across, the big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located just 20 million…
Perseverance Selfie with Ingenuity
On the Mars rover's mission Sol 46 or Earth date April 6, 2021, Perseverance held out a robotic arm to take its first selfie on Mars . The WATSON camera at the end of the arm was…
NGC 6302: The Butterfly Nebula
The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often given the names of flowers or insects , and its whopping 3 light-year wingspan, NGC 6302 is no exception.…
Savudrija Star Trails
Savudrija lighthouse shines along the coast near the northern end of the Istrian peninsula in this well-composed night skyscape . A navigational aid for sailors on the Adriatic…
A Milky Road to the Rubin Observatory
Is the sky the same every night? No -- the night sky changes every night in many ways. To better explore how the night sky changes, the USA 's NSF and DOE commissioned the Vera C.…
Rainbow Airglow over the Azores
Why would the sky glow like a giant repeating rainbow? Airglow . Now, air glows all of the time, but it is usually hard to see. A disturbance however -- like an approaching storm…
Veil Nebula: Wisps of an Ancient Supernova
Wisps like this are all that remain visible of a Milky Way star. About 7,000 years ago that star exploded in a supernova , leaving the Veil Nebula . At the time, the expanding…
UGC 1810: Wildly Interacting Galaxy from Hubble
What's happening to this spiral galaxy? Although details remain uncertain, it surely has to do with an ongoing battle with its smaller galactic neighbor. The featured galaxy is…
Afterimage Sunset
On May 7, the Sun setting behind a church bell tower was captured in this filtered and manipulated digital skyscape from Ragusa, Sicily, planet Earth. In this version of the image…
Mars in the Loop
This composite of images spaced a weather-permitting 5 to 9 days apart, from 2024 September 19 (top right) through 2025 May 18 (bottom left), faithfully traces ruddy-colored Mars…
Irregular Dwarf Galaxy Sextans A
Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the attention, flaunting young, bright, blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions along graceful, symmetric spiral arms. But…
Herbig-Haro 24
This might look like a double-bladed lightsaber, but these two cosmic jets actually beam outward from a newborn star in a galaxy near you . Constructed from Hubble Space Telescope…
Zeta and Rho Ophiuchi with Milky Way
Behold one of the most photogenic regions of the night sky, captured impressively. Featured , the band of our Milky Way Galaxy runs diagonally along the bottom-left corner, while…
Spiral Galaxy NGC 2566 from Webb
What's happening in the center of spiral galaxy NGC 2566? First, the eight rays that appear to be coming out of the center in the featured infrared image are not real — they are…
Beneath Jupiter
Jupiter is stranger than we knew. NASA's Juno spacecraft has now completed over 70 swoops past Jupiter as it moves around its highly elliptical orbit. Pictured from 2017, Jupiter…
Deimos Before Sunrise
Deimos takes 30 hours and 18 minutes to complete one orbit around the Red Planet. That's a little more than one Martian day or sol which is about 24 hours and 40 minutes long, so…
NGC 6366 vs 47 Ophiuchi
Most globular star clusters roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy, but globular cluster NGC 6366 lies close to the galactic plane . About 12,000 light-years away toward the…
Curly Spiral Galaxy M63
A bright spiral galaxy of the northern sky, Messier 63 is nearby, about 30 million light-years distant toward the loyal constellation Canes Venatici. Also cataloged as NGC 5055,…
International Space Station Crosses the Sun
Typically, the International Space Station is visible only at night. Slowly drifting across the night sky as it orbits the Earth, the International Space Station (ISS) can be seen…
Viewing discoveries from 13 June 2025 through 21 May 2025.