See Ten Spectacular Images From This Year’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year Contest That Capture the Wonders of the Universe

The pictures, on the competition’s shortlist, reveal the remarkable celestial objects that lie above our heads, both in deep space and closer to home

Eli Stark-Elster | AAAS Mass Media Fellow

July 6, 2026 10:00 a.m.

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Each year, the Royal Observatory Greenwich in London invites photographers from across the globe to submit their finest shots of stars, auroras, galaxies, the moon and more. The 18th edition of its ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition drew nearly 4,000 entries from 66 countries.

The 29 shortlisted images, announced on July 1, highlight the staggering patience, drive and good fortune required to produce such awe-inspiring images. Photographers hauled their gear through the Swiss Alps, onto freezing British beaches and up volcanic plateaus, then stacked the results from hours, nights or, in one case, half a year of exposure.

“We are honored to support the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition—a celebration of those who turn their eyes to the night sky and share its beauty with the world,” says Sam Wen, founder and CEO of ZWO, in a statement shared with media. “We hope to help more individuals discover the quiet beauty of looking up and finding their place beneath the stars.”

In the coming months, a panel of art and astronomy experts will select the winners of the competition’s nine categories, two special prizes and a grand award. They’ll be announced on September 17, after which the photos will be displayed in an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in London.

One of the shortlisted photographs, shown above, is a stunning view of the Andromeda Galaxy. Chinese photographers Chuhong Yu and Zuoming Wang spent more than 111 hours taking this deep-field portrait of our galactic neighbor. At the core of Andromeda is a supermassive black hole, at the center of the crimson swirl of hot, electrically charged gas. Also visible are the blue blossoms of stellar nurseries scattered across its arms, where new stars are still busy being born. 

Here are nine other striking images in contention this year.

In March 2025, the moon partially blocked the sun from the perspective of parts of Europe and other regions, allowing a partial solar eclipse to grace the skies. British photographer James McBeath was prepared to capture the moment. He spent hours tracking the eclipse from a park in Leeds, waiting for clouds to drift across the sun. He left with hundreds of frames, but this particular image, with clouds framing the crescent sun in a muted bloody glow, immediately caught his eye. 

“I am very happy with most of the shots I took that day, but this one is easily the dreamiest,” McBeath says in a statement.

U.K.-based photographer Jennifer Rogers captured this remarkable shot in Norway’s Lofoten Islands. It shows an aurora, caused by charged particles from the sun passing through Earth’s magnetic field. She had scouted the icy bay during the day and returned after sunset. She set up her camera, looked up, and saw the northern lights pulsing overhead in the shape of an eagle spreading its wings. 

The aurora’s “intensity and speed were breathtaking,” Rogers says in the statement.

French photographer Martin Giraud recorded the first full moon of the year rising behind the Paris skyline. As it crosses paths with the Eiffel Tower and the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, the lunar orb looms gargantuan. 

The positioning of the landmarks explains this effect: The Eiffel Tower and basilica sat about 3.9 miles and 6.9 miles from his camera, respectively, and the distance between them caused the moon to take on a larger-than-life appearance. The image has a pink hue because the moon rose just before sunset.

Clear winter skies are rare in Hungary, but when they arrive, an H-alpha telescope—capable of observing deep red light—can reveal surprises on the surface of the sun. In this image, Hungarian photographer Rafael Schmall captured a solar prominence erupting from the edge of our home star. The feature, located at the top of the photo, resembles the branching shape of an acacia tree. 

The scale of the “tree” is deceiving: The solar prominence is vast enough to fit many Earths beneath its canopy.

The title of this image is a traditional Japanese phrase meaning “snow, moon and flowers.” Japanese photographer Takanobu Kurosaki caught all three at the Funakawa River. His shortlisted image shows cherry blossoms in the foreground and the snow-capped peak of Mount Asahi in the background, both of which glow beneath a lunar halo. 

The famous blossoms usually last less than two weeks, which makes their alignment with the snow and moonlight a rare event. “To emphasize the fragility of the scene, I captured this as a single exposure rather than as a composite,” Kurosaki says in the statement.

On one December night, Chinese photographer ZhiPu Wang set out to photograph the Big Dipper, using a soft-focus filter to expand the stars. Then, the Geminid meteor shower appeared, filling the sky with falling points of light. Wang adjusted his settings, and within three hours, he captured dozens of shooting stars streaking across the frame.

On the last clear night before a new moon cycle, German photographer Jakob Sahner drove into the Swiss Alps to record Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) just before dawn. The comet hangs above a jagged alpine ridgeline, highlighting its brevity—the icy object will not visit Earth again for 1,350 years.  

“The four-hour hike to this spot was worth it, even though I hadn’t done any planning beforehand on how to shoot this comet,” Sahner says in the statement.

At Nata Beach in Japan, a torii gate stands above the waves, marking a boundary site between the physical world and the spiritual world, according to Shinto tradition. Japanese photographer Yoshiki Abe frames the gate below the Lagoon and Trifid nebulas, clouds of gas and dust filled with baby stars. Positioned below the shining stellar nurseries, the gate looks like a portal to the heavens.

Using a homemade pinhole camera loaded with photosensitive paper, U.S.-based photographer Ksawery Wrobel recorded 182 days of the sun’s path across the sky. Each arc in the image represents the sun’s movement over the course of one day. The gaps signal days when the star stayed hidden behind clouds. Across the exposure, the band of arcs shifts as the sun sinks and climbs with the seasons. 

“To create my solargraph photos, I use small round aluminium jars, as they are easy to install in urban spaces,” Wrobel says in the statement.

Eli Stark-Elster | Read More

Eli Stark-Elster is the AAAS Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellow at Smithsonian magazine. He is a PhD student in evolutionary anthropology at the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on documenting the methods used to induce altered states of consciousness across cultures—he conducts fieldwork in southern Africa, where he studies the shamanic use of hallucinogenic plants and fungi. His writing and research has been featured on NPR, Psyche and the Conversation. He also writes on his Substack, Unpublishable Papers.