1 of 36 Esa Pekka Isomursu
Solar Wind Power
2 of 36 Stefan Liebermann
Spectrum
Marvel at the Northern Lights shining over the Icelandic mountain Vestrahorn.
3 of 36 Carl Gallagher
An Icelandic Saga
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.
4 of 36 Shane Turgeon
Electric Wizardry
The Northern Lights are seen reflected in a lake in Alberta, Canada.
5 of 36 David Loose
Messier 78
This photo shows Messier 78, a reflection nebula near Orion.
6 of 36 Liu Xuemei
Radio Telescope
The Mingantu Astronomical Observatory in Inner Mongolia is shown silhouetted against the night sky.
7 of 36 Mark Hanson, Mike Selby
Arp 271: Cosmic Collision
NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are two spiral galaxies known collectively as Arp 271.
8 of 36 Peter Ward
Hydra’s Pinwheel
The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy was first observed on Feb. 23, 1752, and this finalist photo was taken exactly 270 years later.
9 of 36 Terry Robison
Interacting Galaxies in Eridanus
This pair of interacting galaxies are located in the southern constellation of Eridanus, which means “The River.”
10 of 36 Lynda Laird
Earth Cyanotype
The photographer created a photo montage of Earth using images from the Suomi NPP satellite.
11 of 36 Sergio Diaz Ruiz
Busy Star
This image depicts the busy surface and coronal activity of the sun.
12 of 36 Noah Kujawski
Inverted Minerals
This lunar surface contains hidden colors within the soil, caused by different minerals. Here, the colors have been enhanced and inverted.
13 of 36 Tom Glenn
Above the Lunar South Pole
This composite of images of the lunar south pole was created on two different dates.
14 of 36 Andrea Vanoni
Fly Over the South Pole
Here, you can see the craters and mountains at the lunar south pole.
15 of 36 Simon Tang
Clouds of Hydrogen Gas
Clouds of hydrogen gas give way as the magnetic field lines of the sun snap and clash together.
16 of 36 Alessandro Ravagnin
Partial Eclipse of the Sun in H-alpha
A partial eclipse of the sun as seen from the Veneto region of Italy.
17 of 36 Stuart Green
Solar Inferno
The photographer selectively filtered out all wavelengths of light except a narrow red band (known as the H-alphaline) to reveal an active region of change of the sun.
18 of 36
Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard)
Comet Leonard was discovered on Jan. 3, 2021, by G.J. Leonard.
19 of 36 Flavio Fortunato
Saturn and its Moons
Saturn’s moons are distributed almost symmetrically around the planet, balancing the composition of this photograph.
20 of 36 Damian Peach
The Jovian Family
Jupiter is shown with three of its largest moons.
21 of 36 Hannah Rochford
Equinox Moon and Glastonbury Tor
This finalist captures people enjoying the full harvest moon rising behind Glastonbury Tor in the UK.
22 of 36 Yang Sutie
The Starry Sky Over the World’s Highest National Highway
National Highway 219, the highest national highway in the world, snakes through the foreground. The photo was taken in Shannan, Tibet, China.
23 of 36 Sean Goebel
Moonrise Over Los Angeles
This finalist photo highlights the moon high above the mountains and iconic skyline of Los Angeles.
24 of 36 Takanobu Kurosaki
Rverside of Funakawa in Spring
Breathtaking cherry trees line the Funakawa River in Japan, while only a little moonlight breaks through the sky.
25 of 36 Derek Horlock
Stacks and Stones
The Milky Way pierces through the night sky above stacked stones on the beach at St. Agnes in the Isles of Scilly in the UK.
26 of 36 Mihail Minkov
Ladder to the Stars
This photo is actually a stacked shot of 15 exposures, taken at Shiroka Polyana Dam in Bulgaria.
27 of 36 Marcin Zajac
Oregon Coast
The Milky Way is shown above the southern Oregon coast.
28 of 36 Gen Kiryu
Diagonal
The Milky Way rises above the research pier of the Marine Research Institute in Japan.
29 of 36 Jake Mosher
Crossing the Madison
The Milky Way is shown over the Three Dollar Bridge in Montana.
30 of 36 Sean Goebel
Circles and Curves
Stars circle around Polaris in this stack of 33 four-minute exposures.
31 of 36 Vikas Chander
Chidiya Tapu
The Milky Way mirrors the water at the nature reserve at Chidiya Tapu in India’s Andaman Islands.
32 of 36 Bray Falls
The Crescent Nebula
A deep view of the Crescent Nebula in Cygnus.
33 of 36 Paul Milvain
The Rolling Waves of Vela
This image, taken from Australia, captures a region on the edge of the constellation Vela.
34 of 36 Ignacio Diaz Bobillo
Suburbs of Carina Nebula
The main object in this image is a nebula cataloged as RCW 53c and seldom captured by photographers.
35 of 36 Binyu Wang
A Little Devil Riding on the Head of a Dragon
This image shows the nebula IC 1848 and its core, IC 1871.
36 of 36 Zezhen Zhou
Pickering’s Triangle in Light-Polluted City
Growing light pollution in cities is one of the major challenges faced by astrophotographers. Zezhen Zhou used narrow bandpass filters to capture this image of NGC 6979 (Pickering’s Triangle) in Shaoxing, China.