The Royal Observatory of Greenwich in England is once again opening its annual exhibition of the most beautiful photographs of space. This year around a hundred photos have been selected, all depicting different themes and allowing you to admire the wonders of the cosmos.
Every year the Royal Observatory in Greenwich organizes a prestigious astronomy photography competition. The 2023 edition proves to be a quality vintage, numerous photos reveal the beauty of the cosmos. The institution exhibits around a hundred works by dozens of photographers from around the world at the National Maritime Museum in west London. While the 2022 edition featured an impressive photo of the crowned Comet Leonard, this time the judges turned their attention to the deep sky, namely the Milky Way’s closest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy.
“Andromeda, Unexpected”
Despite its distance of 2.5 million light-years from Earth, M31 appears radiant under the lenses of three amateur astronomers: Marcel Drechsler, Yann Sainty and Xavier Strottner. The winning photo shows the structure of the galaxy and its color nuances in detail. The peculiarity of this shot lies in the lower left part of the image, a slight anomaly is embedded in the frame. Fortunately for astrophotographers, this is not a chromatic aberration, but rather traces of a plasma arc whose origin is unknown and which has not yet been observed.
Space from Earth
The other photographers have no reason to be ashamed of the winners because their work celebrates the complexity and variations of space. In this way, the deep sky also becomes a scope for artists and astronomers from Earth. In particular, Ethan Chappel managed to observe the moon’s occultation of Mars in detail on December 8, 2022. Young Astrophotographer of the Year winners Runwei Xu and Binyu Wang pointed their instruments at IC 2244, the magnificent open cluster, also called the Running Chicken Nebula.
The deep sky hides magnificent and mysterious objects, but the Royal Observatory’s photos also illustrate the wonders of our planet. Professional Andreas Ettl traveled to the Lofoten Islands in Norway to highlight the green Northern Lights that light up the night sky. From the icy ridges of the Himalayas, Angel An took the opportunity to photograph “sprites,” dense red lightning bolts that seemed to fall from the sky by the hundreds.
Numerous photos were published on the website of The Guardian newspaper, offering lovers of beautiful images a real cosmic dizziness.
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