The «Astronomy Photographer of the Year» contest has announced the stunning 2024 winners. From fascinating «mythical monsters to dizzying distant constellations, the shortlisted candidates showcase the magnificent beauty of the sky around us. Here are this year’s stunning nominees. The finalists include photos of the sun, the aurora borealis, rare astronomical phenomena, and distant galaxies.
In this image, a powerful geomagnetic storm creates a stunning color spectacle in the night sky of Iceland. The author took a panoramic photo near Mount Eystragorn — «one of the most amazing I’ve experienced while taking night photography».
In this vivid image by photographer Wenliang, L — is an explosive sunspot that ejects plasma from the surface of the Sun.
In this image from La Palma, one of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, Isaac Newton’s huge telescope is under ominous space clouds from the constellation Cygnus.
Carina Letelier Baeza captured the aurora borealis in the shape of a dragon. Its tail descends to the horizon, its bright green rays take the form of wings rising above the rocky pyramids of Arctic Henge in Iceland.
The author created this breathtaking image of stars over the ruins of an old pier and cracked clay on Snettisham Beach in Norfolk, UK.
The interstellar clouds of CG 4 (Cometary Globule 4) form a terrifying shape that looks like it’s about to swallow the galaxy in this image taken by a team of astrophotographers.
In this photo, Shandor Bilitsky captured the beauty of the Pleiades constellation. Also known as Messier 45 or the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades consist of thousands of the brightest stars. The constellation is located at a distance of 445 light years from the Earth.
This panorama shows the Geminidid meteor shower against the winter Milky Way in the night sky over La Palma. Jacob Zahner says he saw three meteors per minute during the peak of the shower.
Jann Sainty captured the supernova Leo in this stunning image. The title is a reference to «The Scream», a famous painting by Edvard Munch — it is a scream that continues to echo through space after a star dies.
The author created this eerie abstract image using a photo taken from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter — a spacecraft that searches for water on Mars.
Source: Live Science