APOD is 25 Years Old Today
15.06.2020

Welcome to the quadranscentennial year of the Astronomy Picture of the Day. Perhaps a source of consistency for some, APOD is still here. To help celebrate APOD's Silver Anniversary, some of APOD's TVAoTaSMD have recorded a birthday greeting and thanks to APOD's readership in today's featured video.

APOD is One Year Old Today
16.06.1996

The first Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) appeared one year ago today. Pictured above are Robert Nemiroff (left) and Jerry Bonnell (right), engaged in creating the APOD web pages. APOD started over speculative conversations on the ultimate value of the World Wide Web.

APOD: 2026 February 9 Б Miranda Revisited
8.02.2026

What is Miranda really like? Visually, old images from NASA's Voyager 2 have been recently combined and remastered to result in the featured image of Uranus's 500-kilometer-wide moon. In the late 1980s...

Long Stem Rosette
13.02.2008

The Rosette Nebula (aka NGC 2237) is not the only cosmic cloud of gas and dust to evoke the imagery of flowers. But it is the one most often suggested as a suitable astronomy image for Valentine's Day.

A Hale-Bopp Triple Crown
23.07.1997

It was truly a busy sky. In one of the more spectacular photos yet submitted to Astronomy Picture of the Day, Don Cooke of Lyme, New Hampshire caught the Sun, Moon, Earth, night sky, Pleiades star cluster, and Comet Hale-Bopp all in one frame.

A Taurid Meteor Fireball
14.11.2005

Have you ever seen a very bright meteor? Unexpected, this year's Taurid meteor shower resulted in numerous reports of very bright fireballs during the nights surrounding Halloween. Pictured above, a fireball that momentarily rivaled the brightness of the full Moon was caught over Cerro Pachon, Chile by a continuous sky monitor on November 1.

Gamma Ray Bursts from the Unknown
27.08.1995

Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) pose one of the greatest mysteries of modern astronomy. About once a day, the gamma-ray sky lights up with a spectacular explosion. No one knows what causes these explosions or even how far away they are.

APOD: 2025 May 11 Б The Surface of Venus from Venera 14
10.05.2025

If you could stand on Venus -- what would you see? Pictured is the view from Venera 14, a robotic Soviet lander which parachuted and air-braked down through the thick Venusian atmosphere in March of 1982.

A Gegenschein Lunar Eclipse
13.10.2015

Is there anything interesting to see in the direction opposite the Sun? One night last month, there were quite a few things. First, the red-glowing orb on the lower right of the featured image is the full moon, darkened and reddened because it has entered Earth's shadow.

25 Years Ago: Vikings on Mars
21.07.2001

On July 20, 1976, NASA's Viking 1 lander become the first spacecraft to land on Mars, followed weeks later by its twin robot explorer, the Viking 2 lander. Operating on the Martian surface...