Behold! The 2025 ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year Awards shortlist has been released, showcasing a spectacular array of astrophotography images ranging from solar prominences and auroras to distant galaxies and beguiling nebulas.
For the past 17 years, the Royal Observatory Greenwich — supported by astronomy camera maker ZWO — has called on the global photography community to compete in an open competition celebrating the majesty and variety of our night sky.
The 2025 competition saw photographers from 69 countries submit over 5,500 entries to compete in a plethora of diverse categories to gain recognition and, naturally, prize money. The overall winner of the ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the year will bag a £10,000 (about $13,560 U.S.) grand prize, while the photographers who come out on top in each individual category receive £1,500 (about $2,030 U.S.) for their valiant efforts.
“At ZWO, we believe that astrophotography is not only a way to record the cosmos, but also a way to inspire curiosity, foster education and build communities that transcend borders,” said ZWO founder Sam Wen in a press release revealing the shortlisted images. “Everyone deserves a chance to connect with the universe — and through our support, we hope to bring that experience to more people.”
The winners of each category will be announced in an awards ceremony in September later this year, with the victorious entries — and select runners-up — later being exhibited at the National Maritime Museum in London.
Read on to see the spectacular images shortlisted for the 2025 ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the year awards!
Auroras
This image of a swirling green aurora was captured from a remote location on the Senja Peninsula in northern Norway by Filip Brebenda on Sept 12, 2024. Silvery birch trees dominate the foreground, while a rocky outcrop frames the aurora dancing through the sky above, which is reflected in a placid pool of water between the trunks.
Photographer Daniel Zafra was able to capture a rare occurrence of a magenta and green aurora reflecting off the waters of California’s Mono Lake in October 2024, alongside protruding rocky formations.
Vincent Beudez imaged a breathtaking auroral display reminiscent of an arctic flower unfolding in the skies over Tromsø in northern Norway on April 4, 2024, framed by the snowy peaks of nearby mountains. He used a Sony Alpha 7S III camera to get the shot.
Galaxies
An image of the Triangulum Galaxy (M33), as captured by astrophotographers Bence Tóth, Péter Feltóti, Bertalan Kecskés from Hungary over the course of several sessions over November-December 2024. The galaxy can be seen undergoing a burst of star formation thanks to the tidal influence of a galactic neighbor, with the glowing red form of an emission nebula visible throughout, giving the impression of a cosmic firework display.
The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) can be seen shining with the light of countless stars and nebulas in this image taken from the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan, China in late 2024. It took around 216 hours to capture the ancient light used in the creation of the image, which shows the bright central bulge and spiral arms of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbor in phenomenal detail.
The barred spiral galaxy NGC 2997 — also known as the Antlia Cabbage Galaxy — is pictured surrounded by glowing red cosmic clouds in this shot by Xinran Li taken from Río Hurtado, Chile in January and February earlier this year. The galaxy exists at a distance of 35 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Antlia and took around 10 hours of observing time to capture using a range of filters.
Our Moon
A distorted moon can be seen rising over the French château of Villebois-Lavalette in this shot by Flavien Beauvais. The shot was taken during the full moon phase in November 2024 using a Canon EOD R7 camera in conjunction with a Sigma 150-600 mm lens.
This composite image captured by Chayaphon Phanitloet from the Nakhon Ratchasima region of Thailand depicts a period in October 2024 when the moon slid in front of Saturn — visible to the left of the image — blocking its light.
Photographer Karthik Easvur created this portrait of a supermoon looming large in the sky over Delhi, India, in November 2024, by stitching together 24 separate images into a seamless mosaic. The so-called “Beaver Moon” was captured using a 6-inch aperture telescope in conjunction with a ZWO camera along with several more helpful peripherals and filters.
Our Sun
Zhang Yanguang was able to capture this perfectly timed composite shot of the International Space Station (ISS) sweeping across the face of the sun from the Fujian region of China on Jan. 24 ofthis year. The photographer deftly maintained the crisp profile of the space station when combining the images during post-processing, while revealing phenomenal detail on the surface of our parent star.
This image of a 311,000-mile-long (500,000 kilometers) solar prominence erupting from the sun was captured on Nov. 7, 2024 from Guangdong province in China by astrophotographer PengFei Chou. The image is constructed from 20 stacked data sets captured over the course of the hour-long eruption.
An artistic view of the sun captured by photographer Damien Cannane, depicting the different phases of a solar eclipse. The arcs in between the eclipsed suns represent a phenomenon known as “Baily’s Beads,” which arise as sunlight shines through valleys on the lunar surface in the moments before and after totality.
People & Space
Tianyao Yang took this picture of the July 2024 full moon behind skyscrapers in the Lujiazui district of Shanghai. The shot was the culmination of five years of planning and was taken from a distance of 16.5 miles (26.5 km) using a long lens, allowing the photographer to give the moon an outsized appearance compared to the foreground buildings.
This picture, taken from Songyang County, China by photographer Yujie Zhang in August 2024, shows the bright ribbon of the Milky Way tumbling toward a collection of geometric buildings reflected in a foreground body of water.
This placid scene taken with a Canon R6 Mark II camera by photographer Paul Joels captures the Milky Way in the sky over a boathouse in Lulworth Cove in the U.K. A multitude of stars can be seen shining down on the seaside vista, twinkling above a lone boat resting on the roadside.
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is seen streaking through the sky above Honolulu, Hawaii, as captured from the Pu’u O Kaimukī Park by photographer Ran Shen on Oct. 12, 2024.
Chester Hall-Fernandez captured this view of the Milky Way setting parallel to the horizon over the Mount John Observatory in New Zealand on July 21, 2024. The MOA-II telescope — the largest telescope on New Zealand’s South Island — can be seen to the right of the image, observing the countless stars populating the southern hemisphere night sky.
Planets, Comets & Asteroids
An image of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS captured from Namibia in southern Africa by photographers Gerald Rhemann and Michael Jäger in September last year, featuring dust (grey) and ion (blue) tails. The “kinks” in the more tenuous ion trail are created as the solar wind pouring from our parent star impacts the particle trail shed by the wandering comet.
This family portrait of solar system planets — excluding Earth for obvious reasons — was captured with the aid of a 20-inch Dobsonian telescope in Bavaria, Germany, between September 2023 and December 2024 by astrophotographer Sophie Paulin. The planets — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — can be seen parading in a line from left to right in the composite piece.
Skyscapes
Benjamin Barakat captured this image of a lone tree standing in front of star trails from the Hidaybu district of Yemen on March 13, 2024 using a Sony Alpha 7 IV camera.
A full moon is pictured rising over the Dolomite mountains in Italy by photographer Fabian Dalpiaz in November 2024, as the last of the sunlight catches the upper slopes on a cloudless evening.
This composite shot of the Milky Way was captured by Yoshiki Abe from the mouth of a remote cave in the coastal region of Yamaguchi, Japan on Oct. 12, 2024. The foreground image was snapped during a brief window known to photographers as the “blue hour,” which occurs around the time that the sun sets, infusing the environment with a blueish hue. Abe captured his image of the Milky Way later that same night.
A 23,000 pixel-wide panorama of the Utah Desert, imaged at night by astrophotographer Jim Hildreth with the Milky Way arcing high overhead amongst a sea of stars.
Photographer Andreas Karaolis captured this panorama of the Milky Way’s Cygnus region streaking over a verdant hillside in Cyprus in October 2024. Karaolis also made use of the blue hour to capture the foreground image, snapping a series of 30- and 120-second exposures to capture it and the cosmic scene above, before combining them in the post-processing step.
Stars & Nebulas
This composite view of the Christmas Tree Nebula and Rosetta Nebula was captured from the Deep Sky Chile Observatory in November and December last year. The colorful view is the result of 150 hours of observation, during which the ancient light of the nebulas was collected using a wide range of filters.
A portrait of the “Running Chicken Nebula” (IC 2944) — an enormous stellar nursery located in the constellation Centaurus — captured by astrophotographer Rod Prazeres from Queensland, Australia over the course of several nights in March and April 2024.
Shaoyu Zhang took this electric view of the “Spaghetti Nebula” (Simeis 147) from Chile and Sichuan, China between December 2024 and February 2025. Over 148 hours of exposure time were used to obtain a “full-spectrum” image of the vast supernova remnant to reveal structures ordinarily hidden behind a veil of cosmic dust.
The Sir Patrick Moore Prize for Best Newcomer
An image of the Abel 85 supernova remnant captured in the skies above China by Deqian Li. Li used 23.4 hours of light data to create the image, which was captured over the course of a six-day camping trip in Hongyuan county, China with a Takahashi Epsilon-160ED telescope paired with a ZWO astronomy camera.
ZWO Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year
A 22-megapixel panorama showing the different stages of a total solar eclipse captured during the April 8, 2024 event by photographer Louis Egan from Quebec, Canada. The final piece was created using around 200 individual images.
Annie Maunder Open Category
Peter Ward’s “neon sun” effect was created using ultraviolet data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which was remapped to colors visible to the naked eye, and turned “inside out” to surround the sun.
Editor’s Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com’s readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.
