In Photos: Angry Sun, A Blue Martian Sunset And Weird Dolphin Head Star In Astronomy Photographer Of The Year Entries – Forbes

The Tumult of the Sun Hassan Hatami

From a turbulent image of our star and an odd-looking Martian sunset to the mesmerizing Dolphin Head Nebula and a close-up of the International Space Station set against the Moon, the Royal Observatorys annualAstronomy Photographer of the Year competition has once again produced some astonishing images of our Solar System and of the deep sky.

Run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in London in association withBBC Sky at Night Magazine and now in its thirteenth year, the competition this year received over 4,500 entries from around the world.

Here are eight of the Solar System and deep sky entries from Iran, Sri Lanka, China and even from the Martian surface, some of which will triumph and feature in the final 11 when the results are announced in September 2021.

Above: Using a specially selected image from NASAs Solar Dynamics Observatory collection, photographer Hassan Hatami from Iran used a combination of three wavelengths to create this image of the turbulent Sun.

The original images were taken by the SDO in January 2015 when our Sun was close to solar maximum.

Dolphin Head Nebula Yovin Yahathugoda

Above: interstellar winds create a perfect cosmic bubble in this bi-colour image of the Dolphin Head Nebula in the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog. At the center of the image is a rare Wolf-Rayet star.

It took the photographer 1.5 hours exposure time over three nights to capture this image using a remote telescope in Chile.

Saturn at its Best Damian Peach

Above: ace planetary astrophotographer Damian Peach here shows-off an image of the ringed planet taken from La Palma, Murcia, Spain in July 2020.

Its polar hexagon can be seen around the pole at bottom, while many other belts and zones can be seen across the planet.

Martian Sunset John White

Above: When NASAs Mars Curiosity Rover captures images it dumps them on a server thats publicly available. Photographer John White searched over 390,000 images in the Mars Curiosity raw archive and found these four that show a sunset on the Red Planet.

Why is it blue? Unlike on Earth, blue light better penetrates the fine dust in the Martian atmosphere. The images were taken in April 2015.

A Daytime Transit Andrew McCarthy

Above: the International Space Station (ISS) transiting a slim waning crescent Moon during daylight. Shot in Elk Grove, California in October 2020, this ISS transit of the Moon was captured using two cameras and two telescopes.

The Rose Josep Drudis

Above: the Ring Nebula (M57) is the glowing remains of a Sun-like star and a very famous planetary nebula previously photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope, but its rarely looked like this before. Taken with a professional Planewave CDK24 telescope in the near infra-red, you can see its faint halo as a collection of petals.

This image was taken with hydrogen (red) and oxygen (green and blue) filters, but also adding nitrogen (deep red). Taken from Mayhill, New Mexico, USA, during April, May and June 2020.

Pleiades Sisters Jashanpreet Singh Dingra

Above: Heres a gorgeous image taken in December 2020 from Patiala, Punjab, India by 14-year old Jashanpreet Singh Dingra. The Pleiadesalso known as the Seven Sisters and M45is an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in constellation of Taurus, the Bull. The closest open cluster to the Solar System, the Pleiades is easy to see naked-eye.

Here the photographer has used a Takahashi FSQ-85ED telescope to reveal its nebulositythe hot gas between the stars and illuminated by themover the course of three hours of exposures.

NGC 3981 Bernard Miller

Above: The windswept NGC 3981 is a spiral galaxy about 65 million light years away in the constellation of Crater. Taken using a remote telescope in Chile in February 2021 over 34 hours.

Wishing you wide eyes and clear skies.

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In Photos: Angry Sun, A Blue Martian Sunset And Weird Dolphin Head Star In Astronomy Photographer Of The Year Entries - Forbes