Apologies if you’re not that into appreciating superb photos showcasing the wonders of the world, but we like them around these parts.

Last week, it was the 2018 Wildlife Photographer Of The Year winners, so let’s move onto staring open-mouthed at the sky.

The competition, run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in association with Insight Investment and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, received in excess of 4 200 entries from 91 countries, but in the end, there could only be one winner.

That honour belongs to American photographer Brad Goldpaint, whose “stunning photograph of Utah’s Badlands—with the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies in the background—captured the top prize”.

It was titled ‘Transport the Soul’ and was featured on Gizmodo:

Not a bad effort at all.

Let’s look at some other winners.

Speeding on the Aurora Lane: Nicolas Lefaudeux (France)

Taken from Sirkka, Finland, this otherworldly photo by Nicolas Lefaudeux was chosen as the best in the Aurorae category. If you look carefully, you can see the Big Dipper constellation at the heart of this aurorae, which lasted less than a minute.

NGC 3521, Mysterious Galaxy: Steven Mohr (Australia)

This winning image for the Galaxies category shows spiral galaxy NGC 3521, which is located around 26 million light-years from Earth. The reddish-yellow hues are produced by ancient stars, and the blue-white tones by young, hot stars. This image, taken from Victoria, Australia, comprises around 20.5 hours of exposure time.

Kinda makes you realise how meaningless our existence is in the grand scheme of things, says your mate who just smoked weed for the first time.

Sun King, Little King, and God of War: Nicolas Lefaudeux (France)

This is definitely one of the coolest shots of the August 2017 eclipse we’ve seen. The winner of the Our Sun category shows the eclipsed moon, Mars (the red dot at far right), and the blue star Regulus (just to the left of the Moon). The total exposure lasted 100 seconds and was recorded in more than 120 individual images. Nicolas Lefaudeux captured this photo from Unity Oregon, a location he chose based on weather forecasts.

That’s the eclipse that Donald Trump stared straight at, despite his aides telling him not to.

Corona Australis Dust Complex: Mario Cogo (Italy)

This stunning photo of nebulas NGC 6726-27-29, dark dust cloud Bernes 157, globular cluster NGC 6723, and other celestial objects, was awarded top prize in the Stars and Nebulae category. This six-hour exposure was taken from a farm in Namibia.

Namibia representing.

In order to make you feel inferior, here’s the effort of a 15-year-old.

Great Autumn Morning: Fabian Dalpiaz (Italy)

15-year old Fabian Dalpiaz won the Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year award for this moody image. On an early Monday morning (before an exam at school) Dalpiaz decided to go out and take some images. He got lucky and captured this incredible photograph of a meteor passing over the Dolomites.

On a Monday morning, nogal. Take it down a notch please, Fabian.

The photo right up the top, by the way, is ‘Two Comets with the Pleiades’ by Damian Peach of the UK, and shows “a very rare conjunction of two bright comets passing the famous Pleiades star cluster in Taurus at the same time”.

Nature, man.

[source:gizmodo]