It’s that time again. The most beautiful astronomy photos of the year are chosen and their creators are awarded. For the Royal Observatory Greenwich, the year is not as important as the number of astrophoto competitions that have already been held. And so we are now in 2022 at the competition “Astronomy Photographer of the Year 14”.
It is the world’s largest astronomy photo competition among amateurs and professionals. It will culminate in an exhibition after the winners have been announced in September. This time there were more than 3,000 photo submissions from 67 countries around the world. And now the so-called shortlist has been published, a kind of shortlist.
However, we had to last year to learnthat the “shortlist” isn’t quite as narrow as one might think. After the end of last year’s competition, we were told that a total of around 140 images would be shortlisted, but only just under 40 would be published in advance for the presentation of the shortlist and sent to the media. Normally, these are not the pictures that win later. Because, as the organizer wrote to us, “We generally hold the pictures of the grand prize winners until after the award ceremony so that we don’t send out the same pictures twice.”
That means: The pictures that are now appearing here are undoubtedly among the most beautiful of the past few months, but they will probably not win all over the place. Hence the word “almost” in the title.
As every year, there are different categories, for example “galaxies” or “our sun” or “skyscapes”. We won’t see the winning pictures until September. But in the gallery below we show you the 36 photos that were sent to us by the Royal Observatory Greenwich for being shortlisted. But as I said: there are still about 100 others missing.