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.
Comet Lemmon's Wandering Tail
What has happened to Comet Lemmon's tail? The answer is blowing in the wind — the wind from the Sun in this case. This continuous outflow of charged particles from the Sun has…
Crossing Saturn's Ring Plane
If this is Saturn, where are the rings? When Saturn's “appendages” disappeared in 1612, Galileo did not understand why. Later that century, it became understood that Saturn 's…
Andromeda and Friends
This magnificent extragalactic skyscape looks toward the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest large spiral galaxy to the Milky Way. It also accomplishes a Messier catalog trifecta by…
Florida Northern Lights
Northern lights have come to Florida skies . In fact, the brilliant streak of a Northern Taurid meteor flashes through the starry night sky above the beach in this sea and…
Orion and the Running Man
Few cosmic vistas can excite the imagination like The Great Nebula in Orion . Visible as a faint, bland celestial smudge to the naked-eye, the nearest large star-forming region…
A Super Lunar Corona
What are those colorful rings around the Moon? A corona . Rings like this will sometimes appear when the Moon is seen through thin clouds. The effect is created by the diffraction…
Jupiter in Ultraviolet from Hubble
Jupiter looks a bit different in ultraviolet light. To better interpret Jupiter 's cloud motions and to help NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft understand the planetary context of the…
Micro Moon vs. Super Moon
What was so super about Wednesday's supermoon? Last week, a full moon occurred that appeared slightly larger and brighter than usual. The reason is that the Moon 's fully…
Road to the Galactic Center
Does the road to our galaxy's center go through Monument Valley ? It doesn't have to, but if your road does -- take a picture. In this case, the road is US Route 163 and iconic…
A Full Moon at Perigee
What is big, bright, and beautiful , can wear a cape made of clouds, and is at the closest point in its elliptical orbit around planet Earth? A full moon at perigee of course,…
A Dark Seahorse in Cepheus
Spanning light-years, this suggestive shape known as the Seahorse Nebula floats in silhouette against a rich background of stars and glowing hydrogen gas. Seen toward the royal…
NGC 253: Dusty Island Universe
Shiny NGC 253 is one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, and also one of the dustiest. Some call it the Silver Coin Galaxy for its appearance in small telescopes, or just…
Spiral Galaxy NGC 3370 from Hubble
Is this what our own Milky Way Galaxy looks like from far away? Similar in size and grand design to our home Galaxy (although without the central bar), spiral galaxy NGC 3370 lies…
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…
Viewing discoveries from 17 November 2025 through 25 October 2025.