Technology
19 beautiful images from the shortlist of Astronomy Photographer of the Year
A galactic worm is swallowing stars. A plasma whale glides across the surface of the sun. And a creepy dragon dances with an aurora. It’s not the plot of a fantasy novel, it’s our incredible universe, captured in stunning detail.
The Royal Observatory Greenwich has announced the shortlist photos for the film Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2024. The finalists were selected from more than 3,500 photos submitted by professional and amateur photographers from 58 countries. The winner will be announced on September 12 and an exhibition of the best images will be on display at the National Maritime Museum in London from September 14.
Gwenaël Blanck traveled to Australia in April 2023 to view the 62-second total solar eclipse. In this collage he shows the corona and the pink chromosphere, the prominences and Baily’s beads, rays of sunlight shining through the moon’s rugged landscape. The image consists of seven superimposed images, one overexposed for the background and six others for the chromosphere and prominences. Image: © Gwenaël Blanck (France)
This photo of the Geminids meteor shower was taken under perfect conditions on La Palma. During the peak of the night, Sahner could easily observe two, three or more meteors per minute within the field of view. The panorama shows the entire winter galaxy as seen from La Palma in natural RGB colors with additional details in H-alpha. Image: © Jakob Sahner (Germany)
M81, also known as Bode’s Galaxy, is located approximately 11.75 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It is one of the brighter galaxies in the night sky. Part of the Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN) can be seen in the background of the image. IFN is dust outside the galactic plane of the Milky Way that is illuminated only by the stars in the Milky Way. Image: © Holden Aimar (USA), 14 years old
A view of Mount Eystrahorn (Iceland) on the night of a FP7 storm (a strong geomagnetic storm that can produce auroras and disrupt electrical power systems). The intensity of the storm created an impressive palette of colors in the sky. Imagician: © Jose Miguel Picon Chimelis (Spain) JOZE CHIMELIS
The photographer managed to capture the aurora in motion as it turned into something resembling a dragon’s head on a clear night. Telser chose to use black and white to emphasize the contrast of the aurora against the dark sky. Image: © Moritz Telser (Italy) MORITZ TELSER
This image shows the details of the Sun’s surface. The photographer sees the shape of the filament to the left of the disk as a huge plasma whale crossing the solar surface. Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau captured this photo by recording two videos (one for the disk and one for the prominences), each consisting of 850 frames. Image: © Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau (Argentina)
This image shows an abandoned house in the middle of the Namib Desert with the Milky Way above it. The sky was captured with a star tracker to lower the ISO. The veil of clouds and halos around the stars create a dream-like effect. Image: © Stefan Liebermann (Germany)
This impressive aurora, which apparently takes the shape of a dragon, was the result of a geomagnetic storm (level G2) generated by a coronal mass ejection. The photo was taken in the Arctic Henge, one of the few places in Iceland with clear skies that night. Image: © Carina Letelier Baeza (Chile) Cari Letelier
This image captures the International Space Station (ISS) as it passes by October’s Full Moon, the Hunter’s Moon, about 12 hours after a partial lunar eclipse. The striking beauty of the Full Moon is on display, with its mix of rugged highlands, bright crater rays and darker maria. Imagician: © Tom Glenn (USA)
Mount Aso in Kumamoto Prefecture is the collective name for the five peaks often called the ‘Five Mountains of Aso’. One of the peaks, Nakadake, has a volcanic crater that is still active. With this image, Abe wanted to show how the Milky Way has watched over activity on Earth since prehistoric times. This is a composite photo where the foreground and sky are photographed separately, but without moving the tripod. Image: © Yoshiki Abe (Japan)
In this image, the photographer was able to capture a dwarf planet, Ceres, over a billion times smaller than its galactic counterpart, moving beyond the spiral arms of the galaxy. Ceres shines brighter than the galaxy and moves quickly across the night sky. For this image, multiple long exposures were captured over an eight-hour period to show off the beauty of the Blowdryer galaxy and the relatively high speed of the dwarf planet Ceres. Image: © Damon Mitchell Scotting (UK)
CG4 (Cometary Globule 4) is a complex of nebulosity and dust with a very special shape, located in the southern constellation Puppis. The ‘head’ of the galactic worm has dimensions of about 1.5 light years. This image is the result of the work of a team of astrophotographers: they joined forces to rent the powerful Newtonian 500mm telescope from Chilescope service, process the raw files and then vote on the best images. Image: © ShaRa
This photo was taken at Snettisham Beach, famous for its extensive mudflats that attract migratory birds in staggering numbers. The subject in the foreground is a dilapidated jetty, built during the Second World War to allow gravel from the nearby wells to be moved by boat. The curved channel in the mudflats reflects the trailing stars. Image: © Paul Haworth (UK)
This photo captures a sculpture in northwestern Namibia. Made of stone, this is one of a group of sculptures known as the ‘Lone Men of Kaokoland’ [as the region was formerly known]. No one knows who put them there. A long shot of the man running on stones was first taken, then the tripod was moved for a clear view of the horizon. Image: © Vikas Chander (India)
During the Spring Festival, the sun and the altostratus clouds worked together to create this enormous corona, which rose above the Himalayas. The result is a huge palette of colors above the snowy peaks. Image: © Geshuang Chen (China)
Saturn’s decreasing ring tilt means that the moon Titan is closer to Saturn from our vantage than it has been in more than a decade. In the center of the image, Tethys is about to disappear behind Saturn, while Rhea, Enceladus and Mimas are on the left and Dione on the bottom right. The planet’s shadow on the rings is prominent, as are the Cassini and Encke divisions. Image: © Andy Casely (Australia)
The intense brightness of M104’s core often obscures the details contained within the surrounding dust ring. In this image, the dust in that core appears to spiral and float on a wafer-thin layer as it falls toward the massive central black hole. The brighter, more colorful stars in the image are actually in the foreground – part of our Milky Way Galaxy. Image: © Kevin Morefield (USA)
The afterglow of the Cygnus supernova is a popular object with astrophotographers, but the idea here was to take advantage of the high sky quality and long exposure time to highlight details that are rarely seen, such as the supernova’s outer envelope remnant. The name of the statue is a nod to The Scream, the famous painting by Edvard Munch, which symbolizes the scream that continues to echo through space after the death of the star. Image: © Yann Sainty (France)
