Best Photos from the Astronomy Photographer in 2023

Astronomy pictures are often very appealing and attractive. The 15th annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, by Royal Observatory Greenwich has uncovered the shortlisted photos in recent days. Get ready to be amazed and captivated by these stunning couple of pictures.

The competition features nine categories: Aurorae, Galaxies, Our Moon, Our Sun, People and Space, Planets – Comets – Asteroids, Skyscapes, Stars and Nebulae, and the Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year. The Young Astronomy Photographer category welcomes all photographers under the age of 16.

Additionally, overall winners will get a good prize and cash – £10,000. A prize of £1,500 awaits each winner in every category of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. When it comes to Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year, the winner will get a Celestron Astromaster 130EQ MD telescope.

The winners of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, including all category and special prize winners, will be announced on September 14.

“Sperrgebiet, or the restricted area, is a diamond-mining region in Namibia. In the early 1900s the Germans built many diamond-mining settlements in the area, Kolmanskop being the best known. Further to the south of Kolmanskop are Pomona and Bogenfels and it is said that the diamonds here lay on the surface, glinting during Full-Moon nights making for easy pickings,” Vikas explains.

“When the Germans eventually left ghost towns remained, which are still preserved in their natural state although in an advanced state of neglect and rot. Seen here is one of those decayed processing plants in the area around the settlement of Bogenfels.”

“This 78% Moon is blended with a previous Full Moon to create a composite giving the effect of a 3D sphere,” says Rich.

“This is only possible due to extremely favourable libration between the two images. The libration is the tilt of the Moon which varies more than you would think and makes it very difficult to find two images that line up properly. There are many images similar to this out there, but upon closer inspection, they often have duplicated features and are not as well matched. The image is a 22-panel mosaic. Each panel is 400 frames stacked and manually stitched together.”

Mehmet says, “Here we see our sun, photographed using an H-alpha solar telescope. The Sun is moving towards its maximum cycle, and in the photo, we can see a large solar flare. Solar flares are sudden bursts of magnetic energy on the surface of the Sun. These eruptions can be very large, as seen in the image.

“According to our calculation, this solar flare is about 700,000 km long; Earth has a diameter of about 12,700 km.”

According to the astronomers, “This just looks like you can hear it sizzling!”

They continue, “RCW58 is a Wolf Rayet (WR) Bubble formed by the ejecta from WR 40, the central star in the image. These three-dimensional bubbles appear as a ring in two dimensions, as seen in this image, and represent the stellar ejecta contained in a windblown bubble. Several similar WR ring nebulae are known including MI-67, RCW104, RCW78, NGC3199 and NGC6888. H-alpha and OIII emissions from eight of the most well-defined Wolf Rayet ring nebulae in the galaxy reveal that in many cases the outermost edge of the OIII emission leads the H-alpha emission. This suggests that these offsets, when present, are due to the shock from the Wolf Rayet Bubble expanding into the circumstellar envelope.”

“This photo captures a truly magical moment in the Negev desert, as the Sun set behind the rugged terrain and a celestial visitor appeared in the night sky,” photographer Alex says.

“The object at the centre of the image is none other than C/2021 A1 (Leonard), a comet that captured the attention of astronomers and stargazers around the world when it made its closest approach to Earth in 2021–22. Against the backdrop of the vibrant sunset, the comet appears as a bright and ethereal presence, its long tail stretching outwards like a cosmic beacon. The faint glow of the stars in the background adds to the sense of awe and wonder, creating a truly breathtaking, peaceful, otherworldly scene.”

The astronomers say, “Like a big solitaire marquise diamond, this wonderful night-time galactic gem is 35 million light years away in the constellation Leo. A flocculent intermediate spiral galaxy, NGC 3521 lacks the clearly defined arm structure that we see in some other spirals.

“Surrounded by dust, the galaxy has numerous star-forming areas and a luminous centre. The dust bubbles are likely to be from encounters and mergers long ago with satellite galaxies. There are also rarely seen Hydrogen Alpha jets emanating from this galaxy.”

“It doesn’t matter how many times I see the aurora, it fascinates me as if I were seeing it for the first time. When there is good solar activity combined with clear skies, places like Lofoten in the north of Norway can offer amazing views,” Filip says.

“This photo was captured from Vikten, one of the region’s lesser-known beaches. For this scene, the trick was to find a position where the reflection of the mountain, including its peak, would be visible in the water. When there is low tide on Vikten beach, many small pools will appear in the rock paths hollowed out by the ocean. On this night, the reflection was then beautifully complemented by the aurora. It’s hard to have everything sharp when shooting in low light conditions, so I used six single shots to focus stack the foreground, waited 90 minutes for the aurora to appear and then took several photos until I had the ideal formation for my composition.”

Derek explains, “The image of Pandora on the wall in this photograph is by ‘Wild Drawing’, also known as ‘WD’, a Balinese artist on the Greek island of Naxos. It is on a long-abandoned incomplete beach hotel complex. Walking among the ruins is hazardous: there are deep holes in the collapsed concrete floors to avoid.

“According to the ancient Greek myth, Pandora brought evil into the world and caused the downfall of humankind. She did so by opening a mystical box given to her by the god Zeus that contained all the evils of humanity. The moral of Pandora’s Box suggests that curiosity could be dangerous, and some things are best left alone. However, a small satellite space mission co-led by an American Laboratory and NASA flight centre are not going to be dissuaded by the myth; they have called it ‘Pandora’. It is due to be launched by 2025 with the objective to answer the question ‘are we alone?’ They will observe stars and their exoplanets by using a technique called transit spectroscopy to get a better understanding of their atmospheric conditions. This will lay the groundwork for future missions that would then target those planets that have been discovered that are more likely to harbour Earth-like atmospheres.”

Peter says, “I’d only recently made the switch from OSC (one-shot-colour) to mono, and was quite excited, having seen many stunning SHO images around. The Jellyfish Nebula I shot was only my second attempt at mono. I had a stretch of clear skies and started with H-alpha, then OIII and finally SII from my garden close to Geneva, Switzerland. Once I had enough data, I went through each sub individually and removed any which weren’t visually perfect.

“On doing the first stack of the H-alpha using APP (Astro Pixel Processor), I was blown away by the detail and knew I was onto something. On combining with the SHO palette in PixInsight, I was immediately pleased. The image needed very little processing to bring out the contrast and details. Needless to say, I’ll be sticking with mono, and taking my time, to keep the standard high. My Jellyfish Nebula image has become a family favourite, and I’m sure one day it will be on my living room wall!”

João says of the image, “Inspired by the old, deactivated radio telescope antennas, this was my first successful attempt to take a star-trail image. I used a simple remote shutter which was locked for continuous images with 30 seconds exposures. At the time I could not obtain an intervalometer to control continuous multiple exposures.”

More information and pictures about the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2023 competition in rmg.co.uk