The (Almost) Most Beautiful Astronomy Photos of the Year

It’s that time again. The most beautiful astronomy photos of the year are chosen and their creators honored. For the Royal Observatory Greenwich, the year is not as important as the number of astrophoto competitions already held. And so we’re now in competition in 2022 “Astronomy Photographer of the Year 14”,

It is the world’s largest astronomy photo contest between amateurs and professionals. It will culminate in an exhibition after the winners are announced in September. This time there were over 3,000 photo submissions from 67 countries around the world. And now the so-called shortlist has been published, a kind of shortlist.

However, we had to do last year To knowThat “shortlist” is not as narrow as one might think. After the end of last year’s contest, we were told that a total of approximately 140 images would be shortlisted, but only those under 40 would be published and sent to the media in advance for presentation of the shortlist. In general, these are not the photos that win after. Because, as the organizer wrote to us, “We usually keep pictures of grand prize winners until after the awards ceremony so that we don’t send the same photo twice.”
That means: The photos we see here now are undoubtedly some of the most beautiful of the past few months, but they probably won’t win all over the place. Hence the word “almost” in the title.

Like every year, there are different categories, for example “galaxies” or “our sun” or “sky landscapes”. We won’t see the winning photos until September. But in the gallery below we show you 36 photos sent by the Royal Observatory Greenwich to be shortlisted. But as I said: there are still about 100 others missing.