In pictures: astronomy photographer of the year 2018

Taken at Moab, Utah, Goldpaint's Soul Transport depicts huge red rock formations under the Milky Way. the right and the distant Andromeda galaxy on the left.

Goldpaint beat thousands of amateur and professional photographers from around the world to win the £ 10,000 first prize.

Judge Will Gater said, "For me, this beautiful image is emblematic of all that it means to be an astrophotographer, balancing light and darkness, the contrasting textures and tones of the earth and sky and the photographer alone under a starry vault of a scale and of a breathtaking beauty. "

People and Space

Finalist: Andrew Whyte (UK) with Living Space

Taking Whyte's photo in Pagham, West Susbad, to show how much we are used to the loss of views of the night sky because of the light pollution, with off-street lights for breathtaking views.

Aurorae

Winner: Nicolas Lefaudeux (France) with Speed ​​on the aurora way

An auroral NDD blur drifts in the sky over Sirkka, Finland, and looks like a road disappearing on the horizon.

Best Finalist: Matthew James Turner (United Kingdom) with the Castlerigg Stone Circle

Turner's image shows standing stones illuminated by the moonlight, while aurorae beyond the mountains give the impression that the hills emit an ethereal green glow.

Galaxies

Winner: Steven Mohr (Australia) with NGC 3521, The Mysterious Galaxy

The spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is located approximately 26 million light-years away from the constellation Leo, with enormous amounts of dust and wandering stars who shine in the distance.

Aging yellow-red stars, younger blue-and-white stars that burn aggressively, and various scattered nebulae provide a brilliant range of contrasting color shades.

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                  Author's Right of the Image
Steven Mohr

Best Finalist: Raul Villaverde Fraile (Spain) with From Mirach

This image is a mosaic of 24 images representing the Messier 31 and Messier 33 galaxies on both sides of the Mirach star.

Our Moon

Winner: Jordi Delpeix Borrell (Spain) with Inverted Colors of the boundary between Mare Serenitatis and Mare Tranquilitatis

Color inversion is a legacy of deep sky imagery, where slight details of galaxies and nebulae can sometimes be more clear in a negative image.

Moon imaging in this way can help reveal otherwise barely detectable soil features, such as ray systems.

Finalist: Peter Ward (Australia) with Earth Shine

During a total solar eclipse, the brightness of the solar corona conceals the details of the moon.

However, by superimposing multiple digital exposures – from two seconds to 1 / 2,000th of a second – Ward's image shows the bright solar corona as well as the moon's face, illuminated by the reflecting sunlight on the ground.

Our Sun

Winner: Nicolas Lefaudeux (France) with the Sun King, the Little King and the god of war

This image shows the solar corona during a total solar eclipse over Unity, Oregon, United States.

The eclipsing sun is flanked to the left of the blue star Regulus and the red planet Mars to the right.

More than 120 single images were used, with a total exposure time of 100 seconds.

Finalist: Stuart Green (UK) with its Colorful Eruptive Preaminence

In this image, the photographer managed to capture eruptive prominence just hours after a mbadive solar flare.

Presented in an inverted format and enhanced color to create a warm, sunny glow. the photo shows the beautiful structure of the chromosphere of hydrogen.

Planets, comets and asteroids

Winner: Martin Lewis (Kingdom -Uni) with The Grace of Venus

Lewis photographed This infrared image of Venus uses a monochrome digital video camera mounted on a reflector telescope.

The video was processed to remove the blur caused by the Earth's atmosphere and the images were combined to create a single still image of the planet.

Best Finalist: Martin Lewis (United Kingdom) with the Parade of the Planets [19659005] Martin has photographed every planet in our solar system from his own garden in St Albans, Hertfordshire.

Mercury, Uranus and Neptune needed infrared imaging to bring out the details of the surface and were colorized to match their more natural visual appearance.

All images are displayed at the relative size that would be indicated to them by telescope.

Skyscapes

Winner: Ferenc Szemar (Hungary) with Circumpolar

In Gatyateto, Hungary, colorful star trails come together under the bright glow of cities.

This extremely long capture sequence shows the circumpolar Almach star, also known as Gamma Andromedae, just touching the horizon.

Runner-up: Chuanjin Su (China) with the eclipsed moon trail

This image shows a spectacular total lunar eclipse seen from Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province, China.

The photographer set his camera on a four-hour battery, capturing an image reflecting the moon's color and brightness changes before, during, and after the eclipse.

Stars and Nebula

Winner: Mario Cogo (Italy ) with the complex Corona Australis Dust

Under the dark Namibian sky, the photographer set his camera to a six o'clock position in order to capture the molecular complex CrA, a large dark and irregular area located in the northern part of Corona Australis.

Vice Champion: Mario Cogo (Italy) with Rigel and the Witch Head Nebula

The Witch Head Nebula is a very light cloud of gas Molecular illuminated by the super-star Rigel, the seventh most brilliant star in the world. the sky and the brightest star of the constellation Orion.