Aurorae, galaxies, and craters, oh my!

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Some of the many fine images from the Insight Astronomy competition.

Each year, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, London organizes the Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. Typically, this includes an overall winner, as well as distinctions in a handful of specific categories like Galaxies and the Sun. Despite the differences in subjects and equipment involved in these images, they all have one thing in common: they're absolutely stunning.

 

The competition serves as a powerful reminder of how the Universe is full of wonder. As such, we've gone through and pulled out a handful of the ones we found compelling, but anyone near London should stop by the Royal Observatory and check the full collection out while it's still on display. The exhibit is free and runs until June.

 

Spoiler

 An aurora, caused as energetic particles collide with molecules in our atmosphere. This one was photographed near Tromsø, Norway by Bernt Olsen.

 

Two photographers from different countries both found themselves in Indonesia to watch the total eclipse. They combined a dozen images to capture the Sun's corona.

 

Rolf Wahl Olsen is a Dane living in New Zealand, and he's put together a telescope that has captured a deep field by combining 152 hours of exposure time taken over six months. The subject here is the Antlia Galaxy Cluster. Antlia Galaxy Cluster: Extreme Deep Field, 152 Hours © Rolf Wahl Olsen (Denmark)

 

An astronomer (if you look closely, he's got a telescope) nicely backlit by an astronomical object.

 

This is a series of images taken during this March eclipse of the Sun. Because the Moon's surface is irregular, different areas allow small amounts of light through at different times during the eclipse. These bits of light are called Baily's Beads. China's Yu Jun won the competition with this image.

 

This photo captures the galaxy Messier 94, which is notable for having two rings (inner and outer) that are powered by star formation. In addition, this image captures the galaxy's sparse halo, home to few stars but lots of gas and dark matter.

 

Jonathan Farooqi, all of 15 years old, captured this image of the aurora over Northumberland in the UK.

 

Another reminder that astronomy is all around us. Despite the bright lights of Hong Kong, it's still possible to capture the track of the stars bright enough to be visible.

 

Multiple exposures capture lots of the Geminid meteor shower as it appeared in the skies above a Chinese survey telescope.

 

No, the Sun didn't suddenly gain a companion star. Instead, the mists and a long exposure have made the Moon and Venus appear as a binary system.

 

This photo of an aurora was also taken in Norway, at a time when the Sun was just below the horizon, creating a twilight cast to the sky.

 

This is a molecular cloud, which gets its name because the gas is cool enough to form molecules, rather than being ionized. This one, the Perseus Molecular Cloud, actually weighs in at 10,000 times the Sun's mass.

 

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