Browse NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive by date and media: Archive Discoveries
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Sunset Solstice over Stonehenge
Yesterday the Sun reached its southernmost point in planet Earth's sky. Called a solstice , many cultures mark yesterday's date as a change of seasons -- from autumn to winter in…
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Solstice on a Spinning Earth
Can you tell that today is a solstice by the tilt of the Earth? Yes. At a solstice, the Earth's terminator -- the dividing line between night and day -- is tilted the most. The…
A Solstice Sun Tattoo
The word solstice is from the Latin for Sun and to pause or stand still. And in the days surrounding a solstice the Sun's annual north-south drift in planet Earth's sky does slow…
Long Shadows of the Montes Caucasus
When the Moon is at its first quarter phase, the Sun rises along the Montes Caucasus as seen from the lunar surface. The lunar mountain range casts the magnificent, spire-like…
Jupiter and the Meteors from Gemini
Jupiter , the Solar System's ruling gas giant, is the brightest celestial beacon at the center of this composite night skyscape . The scene was constructed by selecting the 40…
W5: The Soul Nebula
Stars are forming in the Soul of the Queen of Aethopia . More specifically, a large star forming region called the Soul Nebula can be found in the direction of the constellation…
Andromeda and Sprites over Australia
What’s happening over that tree? Two very different things. On the left is the Andromeda galaxy , an object that is older than humanity and will last billions of years into the…
Gemini Meteors over Snow Capped Mountains
Where are all of these meteors coming from? In terms of direction on the sky, the pointed answer is the constellation of Gemini. That is why the major meteor shower in December is…
Juno Flyby of Ganymede and Jupiter
What would it be like to fly over the largest moon in the Solar System? In 2021, the robotic Juno spacecraft flew past Jupiter's huge moon Ganymede) and took images that have been…
Orion and the Ocean of Storms
On December 5, 2022, a camera on board the uncrewed Orion spacecraft captured this view as Orion approached its return powered flyby of the Moon. Beyond one of Orion's extended…
Northern Fox Fires
In a Finnish myth , when an arctic fox runs so fast that its bushy tail brushes the mountains, flaming sparks are cast into the heavens creating the northern lights. In fact the…
Galaxies in the River
Large galaxies grow by eating small ones. Even our own galaxy engages in a sort of galactic cannibalism , absorbing small galaxies that are too close and are captured by the Milky…
The Horsehead Nebula
Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, this dusty interstellar molecular cloud has by chance assumed an immediately recognizable shape. Fittingly known as The Horsehead Nebula ,…
The Heart of the Soul Nebula
This cosmic close-up looks deep inside the Soul Nebula. The dark and brooding dust clouds outlined by bright ridges of glowing gas are cataloged as IC 1871. About 25 light-year s…
Flying Over the Earth at Night
Many wonders are visible when flying over the Earth at night. Such visual spectacles occur every day for astronauts in low Earth orbit, but the featured video captured several…
The Sun and Its Missing Colors
It is still not known why the Sun's light is missing some colors. Here are all the visible colors of the Sun , produced by passing the Sun's light through a prism -like device.…
Apollo 17 at Shorty Crater
Fifty three years ago , in December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon exploring the Taurus-Littrow valley, while…
The Bipolar Jets of KX Andromedae
Blasting outward from variable star KX Andromedae, these stunning bipolar jets are 19 light-years long. Recently discovered , they are revealed in unprecedented detail in this…
Galaxies in the Furnace
An example of violence on a cosmic scale, enormous elliptical galaxy NGC 1316 lies about 75 million light-years away toward Fornax , the southern constellation of the Furnace.…
Visualization: Near a Black Hole and Disk
What would it look like to plunge into a monster black hole? This image from a supercomputer visualization shows the entire sky as seen from a simulated camera plunging toward a…
M77: Spiral Galaxy with an Active Center
What's happening in the center of nearby spiral galaxy M77? The face-on galaxy lies a mere 47 million light-years away toward the constellation of the Sea Monster ( Cetus ). At…
3I/ATLAS: Tails of an Interstellar Comet
How typical is our Solar System? Studying 3I/ATLAS , a comet just passing through, is providing clues. Confirmed previous interstellar visitors include an asteroid , a comet , a…
The Surface of Titan from Huygens
If you could stand on Titan -- what would you see? The featured color view from Titan gazes across an unfamiliar and distant landscape on Saturn's largest moon. The scene was…
Moon Games
This is not a screen from a video game . Nestled below the treeline, the small mountain church does look like it might be hiding from Moon though. In the well-composed telephoto…
Viewing discoveries from 22 December 2025 through 29 November 2025.