Astronomy Photo Contest Finalists Will Take Your Breath Away

Marvel at the Northern Lights shining above Iceland’s Vestrahorn mountain.

Photographer Carl Gallagher captured this image of the Aurora Borealis over the wreck of the Gardur in Iceland. The photographer was on a nine-day road trip.

The Northern Lights are reflected in a lake in Alberta, Canada.

This photo shows Messier 78, a reflection nebula near Orion.

The Mingantu Astronomical Observatory in Inner Mongolia stands out against the night sky.

NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are two spiral galaxies known collectively as Arp 271.

The Southern Pinwheel galaxy was first observed on February 23, 1752, and this finalist photo was taken exactly 270 years later.

This pair of interacting galaxies is located in the southern constellation of Eridanus, which means “The River”.

The photographer created a photomontage of Earth from images from the Suomi NPP satellite.

This image represents the occupied surface and the coronal activity of the sun.

This lunar surface contains colors hidden in the ground, caused by different minerals. Here the colors have been enhanced and inverted.

This composite of images of the lunar south pole was created on two different dates.

Here you can see the craters and mountains of the lunar south pole.

Clouds of hydrogen gas give way when the sun’s magnetic field lines break and collide.

A partial solar eclipse seen from the Veneto region of Italy.

The photographer selectively filtered out all wavelengths of light except for a narrow red band (known as H-alphaline) to reveal an active region of sun change.

Comet Leonard was discovered on January 3, 2021 by GJ Leonard.

Saturn’s moons are spread almost symmetrically around the planet, balancing the composition of this photograph.

Jupiter is shown with three of its largest moons.

This runner up captures people enjoying the full harvest moon rising behind Glastonbury Tor in the UK.

National Road 219, the highest national road in the world, meanders in the foreground. The photo was taken in Shannan, Tibet, China.

This finalist photo showcases the moon above the mountains and the iconic Los Angeles skyline.

Breathtaking cherry trees line the Funakawa River in Japan, while only a glimmer of moonlight crosses the sky.

The Milky Way pierces the night sky above stacked stones on the beach at St. Agnes in the UK’s Isles of Scilly.

This photo is actually a stacked shot of 15 exposures, taken at the Shiroka Polyana dam in Bulgaria.

The Milky Way is pictured above the southern Oregon coast.

The Milky Way rises above the research pier of the Marine Research Institute in Japan.

The Milky Way is pictured above the Three Dollar Bridge in Montana.

The stars revolve around Polaris in this stack of 33 four-minute exposures.

The Milky Way reflects water from the Chidiya Tapu Nature Reserve in the Andaman Islands of India.

A deep view of the Crescent Nebula in Cygnus.

This image, taken from Australia, captures a region at the edge of the Vela constellation.

The main object in this image is a nebula cataloged as RCW 53c and rarely captured by photographers.

This image shows the nebula IC 1848 and its core, IC 1871.

Increasing light pollution in cities is one of the major challenges facing astrophotographers. Zezhen Zhou used narrow bandpass filters to capture this image of NGC 6979 (Pickering Triangle) in Shaoxing, China.