17 mesmerizing shots from the Astrophotographer 2023 competition (18 photos)

The winners of the annual space photography competition "Astronomical Photographer of the Year" have been announced. The competition involves photographs of planets, nebulae, galaxies, stars, and other extraterrestrial beauty. The Royal Greenwich Observatory in London received more than 4,000 entries from photographers in more than 64 countries, and a jury recently selected the best images in 10 categories. Let's take a look at the space photos that won a resounding victory in 2023!





1. Plasma arc near the Andromeda galaxy. Photographer - Marcel Drechsler



2. The Chicken Running Nebula, or IC 2944, located in the constellation Centaurus. Photographer - Runwei Xu

3. The sun with a huge filament in the shape of a question mark. Photographer - Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau



4. Sprites are electrical discharges of cold plasma beating in the mesosphere and thermosphere. The photo was taken from the highest ridge of the Himalayas. Photographer Angel An



5. Using audio from NASA's Chandra Sonification Project, the photographer visually captured the sound of the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy. Photographer - John White



To take the picture, the photographer attached a Petri dish filled with water to a speaker. While experimenting with the volume of the black hole's sound, he photographed the patterns that appeared in the liquid.

6. The sun turned inside out. Photographer - Peter Ward



7. Moonrise over the Xinghai Bay Bridge in Dalian, China. Photographer - Haohan Sun



8. Lunar crater Plato with a diameter of 109 km. Photographer - Tom Williams



9. The Wolf Nebula, which is a dark, dense molecular cloud. Photographer - James Baguley



10. Eclipse of Mars on December 8, 2022. During an eclipse, the Moon passes in front of the planet Mars. Photographer - Ethan Chappel



11. Galaxies NGC 5078 and IC879 on the left, and galaxy NGC 5101 on the right. Photographer Paul Montague



12. Aurora in the form of a brush stroke. Photographer - Monika Deviat



13. The gas envelope around the double star system YY Hydrae. Photographer - Marcel Drechsler



14. Stars above the wreckage of the Zeila ship, which ran aground on August 25, 2008 off the coast of Namibia. This dangerous part of the Namibian coast is called the "Skeleton Coast". Photographer Vikas Chander



15. Venus. Photographer - Tom Williams



16. Sh2-132 or the Leo Nebula in the constellation Cepheus. The image was compiled as a result of 70 hours of observations. Photographer - Aaron Wilhelm



17. Photo of the last full moon of 2022. The Moon is surrounded by a "lunar corona". Photographer - Miguel Claro