Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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Comet Lemmon Beyond Lomnický Peak
Comet Lemmon has been putting on a show for cameras around the globe. Passing nearest to Earth in late October, the photogenic comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) sprouted two long and…
A Double Helix Lunar Eclipse
The image was timed to capture a total lunar eclipse -- but it came with quite a twist. First, the eclipse : the fully Earth-shadowed Moon is visible as the orange orb near the…
A Horseshoe Einstein Ring from Hubble
What's large and blue and can wrap itself around an entire galaxy? A gravitational lens mirage. Pictured here , the gravity of a massive elliptical galaxy (luminous red galaxy:…
Pleiades from Planet Earth
The lovely Pleiades star cluster shines in Earth's night sky, a compact group of stars some 400 light-years distant toward the constellation Taurus and the Orion Arm of our Milky…
Ghosts in Cassiopeia
Halloween is an astronomy holiday and spooky shapes always seem to lurk in planet Earth's night skies. In fact, near the center of this telescopic view toward the constellation…
Lynds Dark Nebula 43
Sure, Halloween is an astronomy holiday . But astronomers always enjoy scanning the heavens for spook-tacular galaxies , stars, and nebulae. This favorite is item number 43 from…
Dust Shapes of the Ghost Nebula
Do any shapes seem to jump out at you from this interstellar field of stars and dust? The jeweled expanse, filled with faint, starlight-reflecting clouds, drifts through the night…
NGC 6995: The Bat Nebula
Can you see the bat? It haunts this cosmic close-up of the eastern Veil Nebula . The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, the expanding debris cloud from the death…
Two Tails of Comet Lemmon
How many bright tails does Comet Lemmon have? Two. In the featured image it appears to have three, but why? The reason is that the zigzagging brown filament is a persistent meteor…
Halloween and the Ghost Head Nebula
Halloween's origin is ancient and astronomical. Since the fifth century BC, Halloween has been celebrated as a cross-quarter day , a day halfway between an equinox (equal day /…
Webb's Rho Ophiuchi
A mere 390 light-years away , Sun-like stars and future planetary systems are forming in the Rho Ophiuchi molecular cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to our fair…
Saturn at Night
Saturn is bright in Earth's night skies. Telescopic views of the outer gas giant planet and its beautiful rings often make it a star at star parties . But this stunning view of…
SWAN, Swan, Eagle
Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) sports a greenish coma and fainter tail, seen against congeries of stars and dusty interstellar clouds in this 7 degree wide telescopic field of view from…
Comet Lemmon over the High Tatras
Comet Lemmon putting on a show for cameras around the globe. Passing nearest to the Earth this week, the photogenic comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) is now extending two long tails : a…
IC 1805: The Heart Nebula
What electrifies the Heart Nebula? First, the large emission nebula on the left, catalogued as IC 1805 , looks somewhat like a human heart . The nebula glows brightly in red light…
Finding Comet Lemmon
Tonight, if you can see the stars of the Big Dipper , then you can find comet Lemmon in your evening sky. After sunset, look for the faint but extended comet above your…
Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko Creates Its Tails
Where do comet tails come from? There are usually no obvious places on the nuclei of comets from which the jets that create comet tails emanate. One of the best images of emerging…
3D Bennu
Put on your red/blue glasses and float next to asteroid 101955 Bennu . Shaped like a spinning toy top with boulders littering its rough surface, the tiny Solar System world is…
Ida and Dactyl: Asteroid and Moon
This asteroid has a moon. The robot spacecraft Galileo enroute to explore the Jovian system in 1993, encountered and photographed two asteroids during its long interplanetary…
Young Suns of NGC 7129
Young suns still lie within dusty NGC 7129 , some 3,000 light-years away toward the royal constellation Cepheus . While these stars are at a relatively tender age, only a few…
Rocket Launch Plume over Tucson
Yes, but can your sunset do this? Looking west from Tucson , Arizona , USA one day last month, the sunset sky looked strange when it briefly lit up with the plume of a rocket…
An Unusual Globule in IC 1396
Is there a monster in IC 1396 ? Known to some as the Elephant's Trunk Nebula , parts of gas and dust clouds of this star formation region may appear to take on foreboding forms,…
Lemmon Tree
The tree is not in danger. That's because the comet pictured just above it, Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) , is far in the distance, well away from the Earth. Comet Lemmon now continues…
All the Water on Europa
How much of Jupiter's moon Europa is made of water? No one is sure, but probably a lot. Based on the Galileo probe data acquired during its exploration of the Jovian system from…
Viewing discoveries from 4 November 2025 through 12 October 2025.