Photographers shortlisted for 14th annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year
A total of 35 images have been shortlisted in the 14th annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition which is run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich . This year, over 3,000 images were received from amateurs and professionals across 67 countries.
© Lionel Majzik. Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard). Shortlisted in Comets & Asteroids category. Hakos, Khomas, Namibia, 27 December 2021. "The most spectacular comet of 2021 produced several major outbursts in the final days of the year. By then, the comet was only visible from the Southern Hemisphere, forcing northern astrophotographers to use the southern robotic telescopes. Fortunately, on 27 December 2021, I managed to get a quarter-hour booking for the world’s most popular robotic telescope at the time – the 200-mm telescope from Skygems Remote Observatories in Namibia. Photography was hampered by overcast weather conditions, but I was delighted to capture the incredibly spectacular comet Leonard with its tail." Shortlisted images from this year’s competition include the Harvest Moon rising behind Glastonbury Tor in the United Kingdom, the lights of the Milky Way mirrored by the highest national highway in the world in Tibet, one of the most detailed amateur-produced maps of the lunar south pole, created in the United States, a partial solar eclipse over Italy, and the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy captured in Australia exactly 270 years after its discovery.
An astronomical highlight of 2021 was the discovery of Comet Leonard, a long period comet identified by G.J. Leonard on 3 January, 2021. It made its closest pass by Earth on 12 December, 2021 and was the brightest comet of the year. Almost a quarter of submissions to the Planets, Comets, and Asteroids category focused on this single comet. Another of the themes featuring in a number of entries this year was the impact of pollution and light pollution on astrophotography.
© Simon Tang. Clouds of Hydrogen Gas. Shortlisted in Our Sun category. Los Angeles, California, USA, 1 October 2021. "Clouds of hydrogen gas give way as the magnetic field lines of the Sun and snap and clash together in an endless dance. This display creates astonishing features, known as prominences, on the limb of the Sun. Some reach far into space, eventually slamming into Earth’s atmosphere, while others arc across the Sun spanning millions of miles across. Make no mistake, these are not clouds on the Sun, but super-heated plasma that could destroy worlds in the blink of an eye! This shot was built up with several captures and stitched together to create a high-resolution final image. Colour was added for dramatic effect." The winners of the competition’s nine categories, two special prizes and the overall winner will be announced at a special online award ceremony on 15 September. The winning images will be displayed in an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in London from 17 September, along with a selection of shortlisted images. The competition’s official book will also showcase the winning and shortlisted entries.
© Yang Sutie. The starry sky over the world's highest national highway. Shortlisted in People & Space category. Shannan, Tibet, China, 14 February 2022. "Mount Kula Kangri is a mountain located in Shannan Prefecture, Tibet, with an altitude of 7,538 metres. In front of it, reaching an altitude of around 5,400 metres, is National Highway 219. It is the highest highway in the world. On the day of shooting, when the Milky Way rose behind the snowy mountain, the Moon had just set in the west – the faint moonlight shone golden on the snow-covered peaks. The Milky Way was undisturbed by the light of the Moon." The overall winner will receive £10,000, while winners of all other categories and the Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year will receive £1,500. Runners-up each receive £500 and highly commended entries receive £250. The Special Prize winners (The Sir Patrick Moore Prize for Best Newcomer and The Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation) will receive £750.
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© Hannah Rochford. Equinox Moon and Glastonbury Tor. Shortlisted in People & Space category. Glastonbury, Somerset, UK, 21 September 2021. "In 2021 I really got into imaging the Moon at a distance with something in the foreground. In this case, it is people enjoying the Full September Harvest Moon as it rises behind Glastonbury Tor. The first time I planned a moonrise (using PhotoPills) and saw the Moon rising was absolutely magical. I cannot explain how it felt. The perspective never fails to excite me. I took this from a few miles away from the Tor to get that ‘gigantic’ Moon look. Capturing the Moon is what led me into my deep-sky astrophotography journey, which is my favourite thing. A lot of people think that this is a composite, but it is one image. I took it with my 10-year-old, second-hand Canon camera." © Stuart Green. Solar Inferno. Shortlisted in Our Sun category. Preston, Lancashire, UK, 19 December 2021. "The Sun is a fascinating target for enthusiastic amateur astronomers and professionals alike. Ever-changing, it looks different on every occasion as new sunspots form, develop, grow and eventually fade away, often with attendant filaments and occasionally solar flares. "All of this is made visible by selectively filtering out all wavelengths of light except for a narrow red band at 656.28 nm. The H-alpha line, as it is known, can be packed full of such visual goodies, as in this image of Active Region 12907. It was taken using a 150-mm refractor operating at f/34 with filters to isolate the H-alpha line. 2,500 separate frames were stacked, deconvoluted, sharpened and coloured to create the fiery glow." © Bray Falls. NGC 6888 the Crescent Nebula. Shortlisted in Stars and Nebulae category. Auberry, California, USA, 27 August–1 September 2021. "This image shows a deep view of the Crescent Nebula in Cygnus, the result of shockwaves originating from the Wolf–Rayet star WR 134. This is a bicolour narrowband image with RGB stars: the nebula details were created from a false bicolour narrowband combination of H-alpha and OIII and the star colours were added from a natural RGB image. All exposures were captured with a high-frequency AO guider at very high-resolution (0.2"/pixel), requiring great seeing. I'm really satisfied with the level of detail in the image and the strength of the OIII shell." © Andrea Vanoni. Moon: Big Mosaic. Shortlisted in Our Moon category. Porto Mantovano, Lombardy, Italy, 19 January 2021. "This is a 32-panel mosaic of the crescent Moon. The assembly process was particularly complex due to the lunar libration (wavering of the Moon as viewed from Earth), which changed during the two hours I spent shooting on that January evening. In this image you can see the most famous craters, rims, mountains, domes and seas of this lunar phase." © Abhijit Patil. Badwater Milky Way. Shortlisted in Skyscapes category. Death Valley, California, USA, 2 September 2021. "Some of the most exquisite locations in Death Valley National Park are the salt flats at Badwater Basin. Located 86 metres below sea level, the basin is the lowest point in North America. Every winter brings new rainwater to the flats and the continuous freeze-thaw-evaporate process creates these hexagonal patterns in the mud. This was the most unique salt structure I had ever seen. The top layer of mud is covered with salt crystals. I walked a good one to two miles from where I’d parked to see the best patterns in the flats. I shot the foreground with my tracker off during the blue hour and then waited for the Milky Way to show up a couple of hours later. I started my tracker and took a 300-second exposure. I blended these two images in post-processing." © Carl Gallagher. An Icelandic Saga. Shortlisted in Aurorae category. Patreksfjörður, Westfjords, Iceland, 10 March 2021. "This image of the Aurora Borealis and the wreck of the Gardur was the culmination of a 9-day, 2,500-mile road trip chasing gaps in the cloud all over Iceland. This is a single exposure, with the foreground lightly painted. The aurora forecast was good, as was the weather forecast, which predicted the clouds would clear. It was quite a powerful experience to see this rusting vessel, once a whaling ship, now sitting on the beach at the end of the fjord with the aurora just beginning to appear through gaps in the cloud. Usually, I get quite irate with clouds, yet with this image I think they add a certain drama to the shot. I never stack, blend or stitch images – it’s just a simple, single, moment in time." © Peter Ward. Hydra’s Pinwheel. Shortlisted in Galaxies category. Barden Ridge, New South Wales, Australia, 30 March 2021, 19, and 23 February 2022. "Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille first observed what later became known as the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy on 23 February 1752 from the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. This image, taken exactly 270 years later, combines a deep set of Hydrogen-alpha exposures along with colour data to highlight the ruby-like star-forming regions of this beautiful barred spiral galaxy. It has exposures taken in 2021 and 2022 using CCD and CMOS cameras that combined give a level of detail that would be very difficult to obtain with just one camera. This colourful Catherine wheel is powered by the light of millions of distant suns."
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