By Jill Dando News

There are not many days left to enter the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 15 competition run by Royal Observatory Greenwich, supported by Liberty Specialty Markets and in association with BBC Sky at Night Magazine. 

From beginners to professionals, photographers need to submit their pictures by 21 noon (GMT) on 3 March to be in the running to win the prestigious award.

The overall winner will take home a top prize of £10,000.  

Each entrant can submit up to ten images to the competition, with participants at all skill levels in with a chance of winning a prize.

The competition has nine main categories, which include Aurorae (images featuring the Northern and Southern Lights), People and Space (photographs of the night sky including people or a human-interest element), Galaxies (deep-space objects beyond the Milky Way galaxy, including galaxies, galaxy clusters and stellar associations).

There is also a Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year (for entrants under 16 years old). 

The winning images will be showcased in an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, which this year opens on 16 September 2023.  

There are also two special prizes, The Sir Patrick Moore Prize for Best Newcomer and The Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation. 

The Sir Patrick Moore Prize for Best Newcomer is open to amateur photographers who have taken up astrophotography in the past year and have not entered an image into the competition previously. 

The Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation recognises the best photo processed using pre-existing open source data, bringing together the worlds of art, astronomy and astrophotography.

Visit rmg.co.uk/imageinnovation to learn more about The Annie Maunder Prize and see step-by-step guides for finding images and image processing.

Photographers can enter online by visiting https://apy.rmg.co.uk/. Each entrant may submit up to ten images to the competition.

Astronomy Photographer of the Year: People’s Choice Awards 2022

The mesmerizing Huayhuash by Daniel Zafra is the winner of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year: People’s Choice Awards 2022.

Zafra faced a physically challenging trek through the Peruvian Andes to capture his spectacular image of the Milky Way, which was taken during the rainy season at Lake Carhuacocha, located about 4,150 metres above sea level.

As a result, Zafra had limited opportunities for photography with only a few minutes per day of clear skies.

The second-place award goes to Miguel Claro for the dramatic A Giant in the Sun’s Limb, which captures a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that took place in February 2022. Aleix Roig’s The Dolphin Nebula Towards a Cosmic Reef, showing the Dolphin-Head Nebula, a huge cosmic bubble, takes third place. 

The winning images were chosen from a shortlist of 24 images, selected by Royal Museums Greenwich from over 3,000 images submitted to the competition in 2022.

For more stories from Jill Dando News visit: http://www.goodnewspost.co.uk