SHARE

The winners of the fifth annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year awards from the Royal Observatory Greenwich have just been announced, so drop whatever it was you were doing and sift through some star porn. This year, the winners were selected from a pool of 1,200 entries from 49 countries.

Below are a selection of the winners, plus a few awesome runners-up who definitely got jilted. The full list of winners (and the equipment they used) can be found on the Royal Museums Greenwich’s website.

Click here to enter the gallery

If you’re near London, you can go see the images in person at the Royal Observatory Greenwich until February 23, 2014. It’s free!

{!! $img_subtitle !!}

The super hot outer atmosphere of the sun, called the corona, is easiest for scientists to study during a total solar eclipse, when the moon blocks out the glare from the much brighter photosphere. It took the photographer two months to create this composite, which won the Our Solar System prize.

{!! $img_subtitle !!}

This year’s overall winner and winner of the Earth and Space category, by Mark Gee of Australia, shows the Magellanic Clouds, two of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way. They’re only visible from the southern hemisphere.
Space
galleries
Photography