You’ve gotta hit one out of the park to win the Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, and it appears a Chinese photographer called Yu Jun has done just that.

Jun snapped his winning pictures on March 9 during a total solar eclipse, his composite image showing a phenomenon known as Baily’s beads.

According to the Huffington Post, ‘this is where “beads” of sunlight peek around the dark disc of the moon during a total solar eclipse.’

Let’s ogle that image then:

And one of the judges on why the picture is a worthy winner:

“This is such a visually striking image, with its succession of fiery arcs all perfectly balanced around the pitch black circle of totality,” Dr. Marek Kukula, the public astronomer at the Greenwich Royal Observatory in England…said in a news release.

“It’s even more impressive when you realize [sic] what it shows: the progress of a solar eclipse, all compressed into a single frame with consummate skill and precision.”

There’s even a video where the judges discuss that winning picture:

Seems to me like the kind of photo you might want to blow up and plonk on the wall. Who knows, maybe you use the code 2ov15, and receive a 15% discount on all your prints.

Let’s take a look at a few of the pictures that ran the winner close:

Star trails highlighting the movement of the Earth gently arc over the towering buildings in the bustling Quarry Bay neighbourhood of Hong Kong.

Discovered in 1781, Messier 94, or M94, is a distant spiral galaxy lying approximately 16 million light-years from Earth.

On the evening of the total solar eclipse of March 20, 2015, the people of Spitsbergen, Norway, were treated to a second natural light show in the form of the Aurora Borealis.

You can treat yourself to more of those stunning snaps HERE.

[source:huffingtonpost]