When a comet meets solar winds, its nuclear coma—a bright cloud of gas around its core—reacts vibrantly to our Sun’s solar maximum, leaving a trail of stellar gas and dust across the solar system. Miraculously, the sky above June Lake, California, cleared up for a full 13 minutes for photographer Dan Bartlett to image the comet clearly enough for his photograph, “Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks Taking a Final Bow.”
With incredible technological advances, the continuous flow of space photos can sometimes feel like background noise. But the winners and finalists of the annual ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year, hosted by Royal Museums Greenwich, remind us how beautiful our universe is—and how clearly we can now identify the cosmic processes behind these stunning snapshots.
Bartlett’s photograph is the winner of the competition’s Planets, Comets, and Asteroids category, but his work is just the tip of the iceberg (or comet?) among the many fantastic images that caught the judges’ eyes. Take a trip to outer space with some of our favorite entries from the gallery.
“The Andromeda Core” by Weitang Liang, Qi Yang and Chuhong Yu
The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is one of the more well-known neighbors of the Milky Way. This stunning image is the overall winner of the competition, in addition to winning the Galaxies category, for its commendable effort in highlighting the galaxy’s H-alpha regions, or ionized hydrogen gas—revealing the intricate, molecular processes in motion within the galaxy.
“By carefully isolating and processing the H-alpha channel, we were able to enhance the visibility of these ionized gas clouds, which trace ongoing star formation,” the photographers said in their winning statement. “This image is not just about capturing Andromeda’s beauty—it is an effort to bring out the dynamic processes shaping its evolution, from the birth of new stars to the influence of interstellar structures near its core.”
“Saturnrise” by Tom Williams
When NASA’s Artemis mission delivers humans back to the moon, its crew may see something like what’s pictured here, a lunar occultation of Saturn. Such phenomena occur when one cosmic object passes in front of another, blocking it from view. 2024 had an unusually high number of occultations across the globe. Photographer Tom Williams captured one just as Saturn neared its equinox—a point in the planet’s orbit that makes its rings appear like a thin line. This photograph was the runner-up of the competition’s Our Moon category.
“The event pictured here occurred near Saturn’s opposition and so coincided with the near Full Moon,” Williams commented. “With the planet also nearing its equinox, the rings are nearly edge-on, resulting in a particularly striking view as Saturn appears to rise from behind the silhouetted limb of the Moon.”
“Fourth Dimension” by Leonardo Di Maggio
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