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The Royal Observatory Greenwich has announced the winners of its 13th annual Astronomical Photographer of the Year competition, with the top prize of £ 10,000 (approx. $ 13,793) awarded for a beautiful photo of a solar eclipse titled “The Golden Ring”.
Astronomical Photographer of the Year is managed by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in association with BBC Sky Night Magazine. Now in its thirteenth year, the contest organizers say it has received more than 4,500 entries from 75 countries. The best of these exceptional photographs – winners, finalists, highly recommended and shortlisted – are featured in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibit at the National Maritime Museum, open to the public from September 18.
The contest shared some of its top picks earlier this summer when it released its shortlist of images from the year’s submissions.
The competition includes 11 categories in total: Aurorae, Galaxies, Our Moon, Our Sun, People and Space, Planets, Comets and Asteroids, Skyscapes, Stars and Nebulae, Best Newcomer, and Young. “The Golden Ring” was captured by Shuchang Dong and was selected both as the winner of the “Our Sun” category as well as the overall winning image. The photograph represents the annular solar eclipse that occurred on June 21, 2020 in a powerful and atmospheric composition.
On June 21, 2020, there was an annular solar eclipse and the photographer made sure not to miss it. He decided to go to Ali in Tibet to shoot it because the weather is sunny all year round. However, during the annular eclipse, there were dark clouds all over the sky. The anticipation was great, but less than a minute after the annular eclipse, the sun broke through the clouds and the photographer had the chance to capture that moment. Then the Sun disappeared again.
Below are the winning images from the other categories along with a description of the images provided by the Royal Observatory.
aurora
As the third officer, the photographer was on guard that night on the deck of the ship when he noticed a tiny white band in the sky approaching like a snake. He had a feeling that there was something in the air, that something big was going to happen and instantly knew that was what he was waiting for. He picked up his camera, walked over to the catwalk wing, took up a position, and began to wait. Minutes later the sky was full of brilliant green lights dancing in the dark and shining above everything in their path. The photographer felt it was his mission to share this beauty with the world.
Galaxies
An expanse of cosmic dust, stars and nebulae along the plane of the Milky Way galaxy form a beautiful ring in this image. The panorama covers the entire galaxy visible from planet Earth. This is an ambitious 360-degree mosaic that took the photographer two years. Sites in the northern hemisphere in China and sites in the southern hemisphere in New Zealand were used to collect the image data. Like a shiny gem set in the Milky Way ring, the galactic center bulge is at the very top. The bright planet Jupiter is the lighthouse just above the central bulge and to the left of the red giant star Antares. Along the plane and almost 180 ° from the galactic center at the bottom of the ring is the area around Orion. The Milky Way ring encompasses two notable galaxies in the southern sky, the Magellanic Clouds.
Our moon
In a perspective reminiscent of the Apollo missions, the lunar horizon is crowned with a planetary crescent. However, this is not the Earth rising above the Moon captured by a probe orbiting our satellite, but Venus just before it was obscured by the Moon, as observed. from Earth in broad daylight on June 19, 2020. The rocky horizon of the Moon appears very dark in contrast to the sparkling crescent of the planet surrounded by white clouds.
People and space
With the UK completely locked down and travel restricted for many months due to the pandemic, astrophotography has become the photographer’s focus. This photo sums up the year 2020 – cramped but hopeful. The photographer’s six-year-old daughter, still very interested in photoshoots, was present during the editing. Sitting by the door, she was showing the stars appearing one by one in the sky to her Max plush, which gave the photographer the perfect opportunity to place it in the frame that complimented the message behind the photo.
Planets Comets and Asteroids
The photographer was shooting with two other friends on that cold January evening. They were not planning to capture meteors but distant galaxies and nebulae. After setting up the camera to film the Lion Triplet galaxies, the photographer and his friends saw a brilliant green meteor burn right in front of their eyes as it tore through Earth’s atmosphere. They were all amazed to witness a fireball meteor. After catching their breath, one of the friends mentioned that the photographer’s camera was pointing in the direction of the comet, but the photographer thought he had no way of catching it as it had zoomed in fully. . Once he checked his camera there it was – perfectly framed. The photographer was wrong and the lens was not zoomed in, making the perfect composition for the meteor. This incredible image was a happy accident.
Skyscapes
The smoking crescent moon floats in an ocean-blue atmosphere above calm, shiny sand dunes and the red of the sunset has faded into the blue twilight. The photographer walked deep into the dunes and finally found the foreground he had imagined for this shot. Once everything was put together, he looked up and hung a shining shard of a crescent moon outlining his dark but visible face. This HDR / perspective mix incorporates four images, all taken that night with the same 70-200mm lens and from the same tripod location. The images were combined in Photoshop and together they effectively reproduce the sublime scene the photographer witnessed that evening.
Stars and nebulae
The California Nebula, also known as NGC 1499, was captured for seven nights in 2021 using broadband and narrowband filters, with a total integration time of 16.1 hours. This emitting nebula is about 100 light years in length and 1,000 light years from Earth. It is named California Nebula because it resembles the outline of the US state of California. The raw data was preprocessed and the stars were removed using a tool called Starnet, then replaced later during post-processing with the more natural colored stars of the RGB data (red, green, blue). In this Hubble Palette release, alpha hydrogen is mapped to green, single ionized sulfur (SII) is mapped to red, and double ionized oxygen (OIII) is mapped to the blue channel. Although the colors in this image are not the true colors, narrowband filters reveal a lot more hidden gases not visible in a wideband image.
Best newcomer
Four hours before the launch of Falcon 9, the photographer downloaded the Photo Pills app, subscribed to flightclub.io, and began an intensive search to understand the two apps and locate a place where the flight arc would overlap the Moon. When the photographer arrived at the launch site, he was blocked by a gate and ended up on another dark road with trees blocking the launch pad. After doing a quick math, he parked and ran a hundred feet in the dark, then the sky lit up as Falcon 9 rose straight up, leaned over and aimed straight at the Moon.
Young
This is an image of the Sun, Moon, and solar system planets (except Earth) taken during the Year of the Rat in China. In this special year, the photographer felt very fortunate to produce the images of these celestial bodies and for a student who has only been doing astrophotography for a year, it was a great accomplishment.
All the winners, finalists and shortlisted entries can be viewed on the Royal Observatory website. This year’s winners, shortlisted entries and a selection of past winners will be published by Collins in the official competition book, available for pre-order in the shops of the Royal Museums Greenwich and online from September 30 for £ 25 ( about $ 35).
Image credits: Header image by Shuchang Dong, all other images are individually credited and provided courtesy of Royal Observatory Greenwich Year 13 Astronomy Photograph (2021).
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