The Universe as you have never seen it – Winners of Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2024
The Universe as you have never seen it – Winners of Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2024
Royal Observatory Greenwich announces the amazing winners of Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2024.
Save 40% when you subscribe to BBC Science Focus Magazine!The Aurora Australis captured above the mountains in Queenstown. It is a 19-image panorama capturing all the fast-moving beams that lit up the sky in February 2023. The photographer used an astro-modified camera to capture all the pink hues of the aurora which makes for an incredibly dynamic final image. Photo by Larryn Rae
Ryan Imperio has just been announced as the Overall Winner of the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s title Astronomy Photographer of the Year, with his astounding image of the progression of Baily’s beads during the 2023 annular solar eclipse.
Baily’s beads are formed when sunlight shines through the valleys and craters of the Moon’s surface, breaking the eclipse’s well-known ring pattern, and are only visible when the Moon enters or exits an eclipse. They are challenging to photograph due to their fleeting nature and the precise timing required.
The Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year award was won by 14-year-old Daniel Borsari for his image 'NGC 1499, A Dusty California'.
The Astronomy Photographer of the Yearcompetition is run by Royal Observatory Greenwich, supported by Liberty Specialty Marketsand in association with BBC Sky at Night Magazine. An exhibition of the winning images will open on 13 September at the National Maritime Museum, London, UK.
Aurorae category winner
The Aurora Australis captured above the mountains in Queenstown. It is a 19-image panorama capturing all the fast-moving beams that lit up the sky in February 2023. The photographer used a modified camera to capture all the pink hues of the aurora, which makes for an incredibly dynamic final image. Photo by Larryn Rae/APOTY16
Our Sun runner-up
This image shows the solar corona at solar maximum and solar minimum. The lower half of the picture was taken in 2017 at close to solar minimum. The upper half was taken approaching solar maximum, six years later. Photo by Peter Ward/APOTY16
Stars & Nebulae category highly commended
This image shows the dust and gas formations around the star Antares. As this part of the sky is barely visible from Hungary, the photographer travelled to Namibia as part of an astrophotography expedition to capture this image. Photo by Bence Tóth/APOTY16
Young category highly commended
When filming the Nishimura Comet, the photographer accidentally captured another comet, later identified as Comet 29P. The Nishimura Comet has an orbital period of 437 years, which means this was the only chance to see it. Photo by Runwei Xu/APOTY16
M63 is a beautiful spiral galaxy surrounded by faint tidal streams reaching 180,000 light years from its core. It is likely that these streams were caused by the disruption of M63’s satellite galaxies and can only be revealed by telescopes under very dark skies. Photo by Sophie Paulin, Jens Unger and Jakob Sahner/APOTY16
People and Space category winner
This H-alpha image of the Sun features the silhouette of the International Space Station (ISS) transiting the eastern solar limb. Crossing the field-of-view in just 0.2 seconds, ISS transits of the Sun are particularly rare for any one location on Earth. The Sun was active and a prominence right next to the station’s transit location can be seen. Photo by Tom Williams/APOTY16
This image shows a unique false-colour view of Jupiter in the CH4 methane band, with the Great Red Spot setting on the western limb. Through the use of visible and methane band filters, the intricate upper-cloud formations and storms are revealed. As most of Jupiter’s atmosphere absorbs light at 889 nanometres, only the bright polar hoods and storm cells remain in the methane channel, resulting in this striking view of the planet. Photo by Sophie Paulin and Tom Williams/APOTY16
During a two-hour photography session, the photographer captured the trails of stars moving across the night sky of Minqin, Gansu Province, China, as the Earth rotated. The shards in the image are metal columns on the ground. The interesting composition was achieved by placing the camera on the ground and shooting from a low angle. Photo by Fei Xue/APOTY16
Young category runner-up
This image was the photographer’s first-ever mosaic, using a selection of images taken over five hours. The Flaming Star Nebula, to the left, is an emissive source that reflects light from dust lanes surrounding the star, AE Aurigae. The Tadpole Nebula on the right has more very dark dust structures. Photo by Sonny Chart/APOTY16
Our Moon category winner
This photograph shows Sinus Iridum, also known as the ‘Bay of Rainbows,’ a 260 km diameter bay bordered by several smaller craters. The photographer used a monochrome camera with a filter to capture the area. The crater visible in the upper right corner, Pythagoras, is particularly noteworthy and is almost visible from the side due to the libration, the wavering of the Moon as viewed from Earth. Photo by Gábor Balázs/APOTY16
Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation winner
This seemingly alien world is actually our endangered planet, Earth, as a distant civilisation might study it. This image was created by mixing the 16 bands monitored by the GOES-18 weather satellite to encode land masses, oceans and atmospheric features as different colours. Photo by Sergio Díaz Ruiz/APOTY16
Stars & Nebulae category runner-up
This is an ambitious three-panel mosaic of the constellation Serpens. Although it receives less attention than many other, more popular summer constellations, its unique assortment of dark, reflection and planetary nebulae, and emission objects atop a gorgeous background of golden stars has made Serpens the photographer’s favourite constellation in the night sky. Photo by Mukund Raguram/APOTY16
People and Space category highly commended
This image includes all the satellites captured during one hour of a time-lapse series. The photographer chose this subject matter to highlight his concerns related to privacy and the power that comes from controlling technology. Photographed at Gallatin County, Montana, USA. Photo by Matt Jackson/APOTY16
Galaxies category winner
This picture shows the galaxy NGC 5128 and its surrounding tidal wave system as well as a visualisation of the relativistic jet – powerful jets of radiation and particles travelling close to the speed of light. This interesting target can only be shot from the southern hemisphere, so the photographers travelled to Namibia to capture the image. Photo by Bence Tóth and Péter Feltóti/APOTY16
Young category highly commended
This photo shows several galaxies including M106. The photographers struggled to find a clear night that was not too late or on a school night. This picture was taken a day before the deadline on a very clear but cold night. It consists of over 300 images stacked together. Photo by Benjamin Lawler and Joshua Lawler/APOTY16
Aurorae category runner-up
The photographer spent a few days waiting for the Aurora Borealis to appear above an area known as The Highlands, Iceland. The green landscape inspired the title 'The Green Kingdom'. Photo by Filip Hrebenda/APOTY16
Our Sun category highly commended
This image shows the movements of the solar surface. The photographer used a 3D-printed slit spectrograph unit connected directly to his telescope, supported with a modern image-processer. This setup can show whether the mass of the solar surface is about to eject towards us (blue-shifted) or falling back (red-shifted). It is also possible to observe the rotation of the Sun itself. Photo by Andras Papp/APOTY16
Young category winner
This image shows a close-up of the California Nebula, NGC 1499 – an emission nebula in the constellation of Perseus. It’s located at a distance of about 1,000 light-years from Earth and it is visible thanks to the ionization of gases by the blue giant star Xi Persei. Photo by Daniele Borsari/APOTY16
Our Moon category highly commended
The photographer had not planned to capture the Moon but when he saw it setting he was struck by its sheer beauty. Due to the surrounding clouds, the crescent looked as if it was the result of a solar eclipse. Photographed in China. Photo by Jinyuan Chen/APOTY16
People and Space category runner-up
The trajectories of Venus and Jupiter appear like two parallel lines in the sky. On this day Venus and Jupiter were particularly close to Earth. The photographer framed their paths with skyscrapers in Lujiazui, Shanghai, China. Photo by Ran Shen/APOTY16
The Markarian’s Chain is a distinctive alignment of galaxies located in the constellation Virgo. It is a part of the larger Virgo Cluster, which is one of the nearest galaxy clusters to the Milky Way. The galaxies in the chain are interacting through tidal forces, causing some of them to display distorted shapes, long tidal tails, or appear as peculiar irregular structures. Photo by Jakob Sahner/APOTY16
Skyscapes category winner
This photograph shows the rugged peaks of the Tasman Valley, New Zealand, reaching up to the impressive features of the southern hemisphere summer night sky. It includes the hydrogen clouds of the Gum Nebula (central red region) and various other regions of active star formation stretched throughout the fainter arms of the Milky Way. This part of the night sky tends to be less photographed, due to the faintness of the Milky Way band. Photo by Tom Rae/APOTY16
Planets, Comets and Asteroids category highly commended
In this image, the photographer was able to capture dwarf planet Ceres (more than a billion times smaller than its galactic counterpart) in transit beyond the M100 galaxy’s spiralling arms. Ceres shines brighter than the galaxy and moves quickly across the night sky. For this image, multiple long exposures were captured over eight hours to showcase the beauty of the M100 Blowdryer Galaxy and the relatively quick speed of the planet. Photo by Damon Mitchell Scotting/APOTY16
The Sir Patrick Moore Prize for Best Newcomer
SH2-308 (AKA the Dolphin Head Nebula) is at a low angle and can only be shot for five hours a day. This image comprises a total of ten days of shooting and post-processing. The main body of the nebula and the background stellar wind are both prominent. Photo by Xin Feng and Miao Gong/APOTY16
Skyscapes category highly commended
This photograph was taken on the northern beach of the small island of Medhufaru. The whole beach shines with turquoise light, while the gems of the Southern Cross constellation – such as the Gum Nebula or Carina Nebula – appear in the sky. Photo by Petr Horalek/APOTY16
Aurorae category highly commended
High auroral activity provided the opportunity to try and capture the Aurora Borealis from the seafront at Brighton, United Kingdom, using a drone. Despite significant light pollution and the drone’s tiny sensor, the photographer was able to capture the pink hues across the night sky. This image comprises several images taken during a single period of auroral activity. Photo by Michael Steven Harris/APOTY16
In this image, the Whirlpool Galaxy, located in the constellation Canes Venatici, is interacting and colliding with its neighbouring galaxy, NGC 5195. Because of the use of an extremely long exposure, the white cloud bands surrounding M51 are also displayed. Photo by ZiYang Chang/APOTY16
Planets, Comets and Asteroids category winner
This false-colour composite shows the phases of Venus on approach to inferior conjunction, which is when Venus and the Earth appear close on the same side of the Sun. Using ultra-violet and infrared filters, the intricate cloud structure within the upper atmosphere of the planet is revealed. Despite Venus’s rotation period being many months long, the atmosphere is far from stationary, circling the planet in around four days. Photo by Tom Williams/APOTY16
Stars & Nebulae category winner
This impressive photograph of The Nereides Nebula in Cassiopeia is the result of 3,559 combined frames, 260 hours of exposure time and telescopes on three continents. The team worked to explore and photograph a previously unknown gigantic supernova remnant in the centre of the famous constellation Cassiopeia. Photo by Marcel Drechsler, Bray Falls, Yann Sainty, Nicolas Martino and Richard Galli/APOTY16
Our Moon category runner-up
This image shows the year’s only planetary occultation, of Venus and the Moon. The photographer worked with his friend who detected the occultation on his telescope. The image is in the mono infrared range, inspired by a NASA photo of Saturn taken in a similar range. Photo by Lóránd Fényes/APOTY16
Our Sun category winner and overall winner
This is a sequence of continuously captured images showing the progression of Baily’s beads during the 2023 annular eclipse. Baily’s beads are formed when sunlight shines through the valleys and craters of the Moon’s surface, breaking the eclipse’s well-known ring pattern, and are only visible when the Moon enters or exits an eclipse. These are a challenge to capture due to their fleeting nature and the precise timing needed. Photo by Ryan Imperio/APOTY16
James Cutmore is the picture editor of BBC Science Focus Magazine. He has worked on the magazine and website for over a decade, telling compelling science stories through the use of striking imagery. He holds a degree in Fine Art, and has been nominated for the British Society of Magazine Editors Talent Awards, being highly commended in 2020. His main areas of interest include photography that highlights positive technology and the natural world. For many years he was a judge for the Wellcome Trust's image competition, as well as judging for the Royal Photographic Society.
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