An ethereal image of comet Leonard traveling against the solar wind has taken the top prize in the astronomy photographer of the year contest.
A photographer from Austria took a picture of the comet and its tail on Christmas Day in 2011. The comet is being caught and swept away by the sun.
One of the highlights of my work is this award. It was worth the effort to make this image a success.
The closest approach to Earth by comet Leonard was in December of 2011. During that approach, the charged particles from the sun interacted with the charged particles in the comet's wake. Astronomers say that comet Leonard will never return to the central solar system because of its trajectory.
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One of the photos entered in the contest was the winner. Ed Bloomer, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said that there are some things that won't be seen again.
Two 14-year-olds from China captured a picture of the closest large spiral galaxy to our own. Their image won a competition. The winner of the Aurorae category was a Slovakian photographer who took a picture of a green Aurora rising over an ice-laden lake. Martin Lewis from the U.K. won the Moon category with a picture of a large crater on the moon's surface.
Andrew McCarthy's People and Space entry shows the International Space Station as a toy. McCarthy took a picture of the International Space Station against the Sea of Tranquility, the site of the first crewed lunar landing. The film "A Year in the Sun" shows how the sun's surface is reflected by sunspots. The Sun category has a winner in Soumyadeep Mukherjee.
The winner of the Skyscapes category is from China, with a shot of snowy peaks and stars in the night sky. A group of people from India, the U.S. and the U.K. captured a picture of an orange disc. Space seems to be looking back at the viewer in "The Eye of God", a fiery image of the Helix Nebula.
There is a full gallery of the winners and runners-up on the website. The photographs will be on display in London.
It was originally published on Live Science
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