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.
HH-222: The Waterfall Nebula
What created the Waterfall Nebula? The origin is still being researched. The structure, officially designated Herbig-Haro 222, appears in the region of NGC 1999 in the Great Orion…
An Artificial Comet
Yes, but can your comet tail do this? No, and what you are seeing is not the tail of a comet . The picture features a cleverly overlayed time-lapse sequence of a group of…
M1: The Crab Nebula
This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula , the result of a supernova seen in 1054 AD , is filled with mysterious filaments. The filaments are not only…
NGC 1898: Globular Cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud
Jewels don't shine this bright -- only stars do. And almost every spot in this jewel-box of an image from the Hubble Space Telescope is a star. Now, some stars are more red than…
Apollo 17's Moonship
Awkward and angular looking, Apollo 17's lunar module Challenger was designed for flight in the near vacuum of space. Digitally enhanced and reprocessed, this picture taken from…
3I/ATLAS Flyby
Attention grabbing interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS made its not-so-close flyby of our fair planet on December 19 at a distance of 1.8 astronomical units. That's about 900…
Unicorn, Fox Fur and Christmas Tree
A star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264 , this beautiful but complex arrangement of interstellar gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant in the faint but fanciful…
Mystery: Little Red Dots in the Early Universe
What are these little red dots (LRDs)? Nobody knows. Discovered only last year, hundreds of LRDs have now been found by the James Webb Space Telescope in the early universe .…
Red Sprites and Circular Elves Lightning over Italy
What's happening in the sky? Lightning . The most commonly seen type of lightning involves flashes of bright white light between clouds. Over the past 50 years, though, other…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Viewing discoveries from 31 December 2025 through 5 December 2025.