Each year, the UK's Royal Observatory in Greenwich runs an Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest. Yesterday, the Observatory announced the winners of its 2013 version, the winners of which will be on display, making it worth a visit if you're anywhere near London. We've brought you some of the winners of microscopy contests in the past; this gives us the chance to feature things at the opposite end of the scale, from planets to galaxies.
Just like the microscopy images, all of them can tell us something about the natural world. Details of images can reveal information about topics that run from orbital mechanics to the behavior of supernovae. But they're a great reminder that something can be both informative and stunningly beautiful. For many people, it was the beauty of the natural world that first inspired them to ask questions about it and set them off on the road that led to a career in science.
Entries are being accepted for the 2014 contest up until late February this year, so if you've got a scope and something compelling, get to work!
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Alexandra Hart took this image, which won in the "Solar System" category. Given that the subject is the dominant object in the Solar System, all of the major features in this image are many times the size of the Earth.
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Taken by 15-year-old siblings, this shot of the famous Horsehead Nebula really shows how its name came about. The winner of the "Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year" category, the image shows how a cloud of material blocks off the light from ionized hydrogen in the background.
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No, these are not a bunch of dandelions entering hyperspace. Matt James set up a long exposure of an Australian wind farm that caused the stars to turn into streaks as the Earth rotated under them. The exposure also turned the working turbines into etherial blurs.
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A highly commended picture in the "Deep Space" category, this photo is called "California vs. the Pleiades" and has previously been selected as one of NASA's Astronomy Pictures of the Day. The nebula on the left, which vaguely resembles the state, is lit by the bright star just to its right. On the right side of the image, you can see the bright young stars of the Pleiades cluster.
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The rock formations in the foreground are located in New Zealand, while the backdrop is the galaxy we call home. This image won the Sir Patrick Moore prize for Best Newcomer.
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From the "People and Space" category, we have "Lost Souls." Repeated exposures let the stars stand out above the sunlight that's only just reaching the horizon and allows the people in the images to both move and appear still.
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A balloon ride that originated in Boulder Colorado let Patrick Cullis capture this photo, which clearly shows both the curvature of the Earth and the incredibly thin layer of atmosphere that supports all the life on it.
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Found in the direction of Ursa Major, NGC 3718 is a spiral galaxy that's been warped out of the normal disk shape by gravitational interactions with another galaxy. This image took home the prize for pictures taken using a robotic telescope.
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Another photo from Alexandra Hart, this one was only awarded "Highly Commended" (but I find it more compelling than the image that won the category). Turbulence and magnetic fields combine to create these amazing features on the Sun's surface.
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Taken on Mount Hamkaek in South Korea, the repeated images show Venus disappearing behind the crescent Moon, a phenomenon that's apparently visible from Earth several times a year. The presence of the landscape below placed this one in the "Earth and Space" category.
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One of the closest planetary nebulae to the Earth, this object was identified back in the early 1800s. Sometimes called the "Eye of Sauron," the object is actually about six light years across—much larger than all of Middle Earth.
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A small part of a supernova remnant called the Cygnus Loop, this structure forms part of the Loop's Eastern Veil region. Each of the colors corresponds to a different ionized gas, caused by the shock of the supernova colliding with gas that had been ejected earlier.
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The winner of the "Deep Space" category, this shot of the Horsehead Nebula brings up its spectacular colors. The dark gas of the horse head is actually a stellar nursery, one that, in interstellar terms, has a high density of dust.
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The overall winner, this photo of the aurora was taken in Iceland, land of the unpronounceable geography. In this case, you're looking at the Jökulsarlon lagoon, located in Vatnajökull National Park.
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