The Royal Observatory Greenwich has announced the winners of the Astronomy Photographer of the Yr 15, during an award ceremony held Sept. 14.
This was the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s fifteenth yr holding the competition, which garnered greater than 4,000 submissions from 64 different countries for 2023. A shortlist of winning submissions was released in July, and plenty of of those spectacular images have made a reappearance.
This yr’s winning image
Because the world’s largest astrophotography competition, Royal Observatory Greenwich divides winners into 11 categories, and from those chooses an overall winner.
This yr’s top spot got here from the Galaxies category, and was awarded to Marcel Drechsler, from Germany, and French photographers Xavier Strottner and Yann Sainty, with their photo of the Andromeda galaxy.
Galaxies and Overall Winner
This winning photo of the Andromeda galaxy from the amateur astronomer team led by Drechsler, Strottner and Sainty is titled , for the big, blue plasma arc pictured next to our nearest galactic neighbor.
The plasma streak was, actually, a discovery all by itself, in line with a release from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, and is now being studied by scientists as possibly the biggest phenomenon of its type in our little corner of the universe.
Runner-up and highly commended entries for the Galaxies category went to Weitang Liang, from China, and Paul Montague, from Australia, for his or her respective photos, and Neighbours.
Auroras
Monika Deviat, from Canada, wins this years best aurora photograph along with her image, . The singularity of this one aurora, in line with the competition’s judges, set it apart from the same old “earthly perspective,” they said, “evoking the humanities of brush-painting and calligraphy.”
Aurorae runner-up and highly commended recognitions were awarded to Andreas Ettl, from Germany, and Chester Hall-Fernandez, from Latest Zealand, with their photos and , respectively.
Our Moon
Ethan Chappel shot this photo of Mars and the moon in the course of the Dec. 8 occultation in 2022, from Cibolo, Texas. shows the Red Planet setting behind the moon’s southern hemisphere, shining shiny in the course of the rare alignment.
Tom Williams, from the UK, and Miguel Claro, from Portugal, won runner-up and highly commended marks for his or her submissions, and , respectively.
Our Sun
was taken by Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau for the Our Sun category winner. The image includes a large query mark-shaped solar filament rising from the sun’s surface, and shows our star in incredible detail.
Our Sun runner-up and highly commended awards went to Peter Ward for his photo, , and Mehmet Ergün for .
People & Space
This photo from Vikas Chander was taken on the Skeleten Coast, on the Atlantic Ocean. Positioned on one among Namibia’s northernmost coastal regions, the Skeleton Coast has earned a repute for its treacherous waters.
, the name of this photograph, can be the name of the boat pictured. The vessel was stranded in 2008, and sits foreground to a 30-minute exposure of the rolling fog, with stars streaking within the grey night sky overhead.
Runner-up and highly commended entries for People & Space were awarded to Andrew McCarthy, for his photo of the International Space Station (ISS) transiting the moon, , and to Katie McGuniness for her out-of-this-world star-trail photograph, .
Planets, Comets & Asteroids
is a false color image of the planet Venus, from photographer Tom Williams, winning within the category of Planets, Comets & Asteroids. Using infrared, Williams was able to spotlight details Venus’ upper atmosphere, revealing way over might be seen with the naked eye.
Runner-up and highly commended recognitions went photos of Jupiter and Uranus and its moons, from photographers Marco Lorenzi and Martin Lewis, respectively.
Related: ‘Lightning’ on Venus is definitely meteors burning up in planet’s atmosphere, study says
Skyscapes
The extremely rare phenomena captured on this photograph from Angel An are called sprites. Sprites occur like lightning, high in Earth’s atmosphere, and are seldom witnessed from the bottom. Astronauts aboard the ISS have been known to take photographs of sprites sometimes. An took this photo, , from the very best ridge of the Himalaya mountains.
Louis Leroux-Gere and Peter Hoszang were awarded runner-up and highly commended for his or her respective photos of star trails over the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, in France, and noctilucent clouds over Hungary.
Stars & Nebulas
The shining star contained in the red, gaseous nebula was photographed by Marcel Drechsler and a team of amateur astronomers. Actually, the shining light on the gas’ center is definitely a pair of binary stars, enveloped within the previously undiscovered nebula.
Runner-up and highly commended awards got to Anthony Quintile and James Baguley, for each of their stunning nebula photos.
The Sir Patrick Moore Prize for Best Newcomer
is Royal Observatory Greenwich’s winning photograph for best newcomer, photographed by Aaron Wilhelm. The colourful image shows the Sh2-132 complex near the constellations Cepheus and Lacerta, and was created using 70 hours of information to merge together the magnificent and colourful gaseous layers.
Young Astronomy Photographer of the Yr
Runwei Xu and Binyu Want win young astronomy photographers of the yr with , a hypnotic mix of swirling cosmic colours from the Running Chicken Nebula, IC2944. The young photographers captured this image using a 1,900 mm Newtonian telescope, over 5.5 hours of exposure.
Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation
Finally, John White won for the innovation category, together with his photo, . Using audio of the supermassive black hole at the middle of the Perseus Galaxy, captured by NASA’s Chandra Sonification Project, White shot the vibrations of water in a petri dish as they fluctuated above the speaker’s soundwaves.
All of the winning photographs, the runners-up, highly commended and more are currently a part of an exhibit on the National Maritime Museum, in Greenwich, London.