Blogs

Photography that's out of this world

'Receiving the Galatic Beam'. The photographer has managed to catch the moment when the Milky Way appears to line up with the giant 64m dish of the radio telescope at Parkes Observatory in Australia (Wayne England)

'Leaning In'. Stars and constellations form a stunning backdrop to this windswept tree in Dartmoor National Park in the south-west of England. Just above the horizon is Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, followed by the unmistakeable outline of Orion the Hunter. Above this lies the triangular face of Taurus the Bull with the orange star Aldebaran, the disc of the Moon and the bright, compact cluster of the Pleiades (Anna Walls)

'A Flawless Point'. The photograph shows the Milky Way arching over Yosemite Valley in California’s famous national park. A lens-shaped (lenticular) cloud hovers over the distinct granite dome of Liberty Cap, which rises to an elevation of over 2000m, near the centre of the photograph (Rogelio Bernal Andreo)

'Hunters Moon over the Alps'. As the full Moon sinks in the west, the Sun rises in the east, lighting up the snow-capped Alpine horizon in dazzling fuschia. Although both Moon and mountain are illuminated by sunlight in this image their different colours reveal the scattering effects of the Earth’s atmosphere on the white light of the Sun. The rays of the rising Sun pass through the full thickness of the air causing the blue, green and yellow light to be scattered in all directions and leaving only the red light to reach the distant mountains. The Moon is slightly higher in the sky, so its reflected sunlight is scattered less severely, and retains a warm yellow glow (Stefano De Rosa)

'Orion Nebula'. Modern cameras are able to detect light which the human eye cannot see but many images capture faraway space in shades of grey. As such, astrophotographers must make practical and aesthetic choices about contrast, brightness and colour in their images. Here, the photographer has chosen an unusually subdued palette of colours to represent the Orion Nebula, replacing the familiar colour spectrum of reds and magentas with subtle greys and salmon pinks which emphasise the delicate structure of the nebula’s dust clouds (Nik Szymanek)

'Venus Transit at the Black Sea'. The black dot below the silhouette of the bird is the planet Venus. Venus Transits, where the planet crosses between the Earth and the Sun, are rare events only occurring in pairs eight years apart, with each pair separated by more than a century. The last transit, from when this picture was taken, was in 2012 and the one before was in 2004. The previous pair of transits were in 1874 and 1882. The next pair of transits will be in 2117 and 2125. The transits are brief, as Venus only takes around six hours to cross the disc of the Sun. Astronomers have a small window of time to capture the stunning sight (Alexandru Conu)

'Herbig-Haro Objects in the Pelican Nebula'. The birth of new stars is a complex process which astronomers are still trying to understand in detail. One fascinating aspect of stellar formation is the production of jets of material which blast out from the poles of some new-born stars. Here, these jets, or ‘Herbig-Haro objects’, can be seen emerging from the thick dust and gas clouds of the Pelican Nebula, a stellar nursery in the constellation of Cygnus (Andre van der Hoeven)

'Photographers on the Rim of Myvatn Craters'. Snappers stand in awe of the auroral displays in northern Iceland (James Woodend)

'Full view of Noctilucent cloud'. Noctilucent clouds are formed of tiny ice crystals high in the atmosphere, around 80km above the ground. Their name means ‘night shining’ in Latin and they only become visible during deep twilight conditions. This is because they are not competing with the blue daytime sky and the more substantial clouds at lower altitudes. Here, despite the bright urban lights, they put on a spectacular display above the Pennine Hills of northern England (Mark Shaw)

'The Night Photographer'. This image captures the dedication of the committed astrophotographer: camping out in a remote location and spending hours waiting for the perfect shot of the night sky. Here, the photographer’s patience has been rewarded with the sight of a bright meteor streaking across the sky as it burns up high in the Earth’s atmosphere (Tommy Eliassen)

'Archway to Heaven'. The spectacular rock formations of the Durdle Door in this part of Dorset’s Jurassic Coast are more than 100 million years old. However, many of the stars that make up the Milky Way are far older, at up to ten billion years old (Stephen Banks)

'Northern Lights XXIII'. To capture all of the different sources of light – the stars, the aurora light and the streetlights of the distant towns – is a tricky balancing act requiring great skill of the photographer (Mike Curry)

'Comet Panstarrs'. Most of the light in this image comes from the Sun. High in the sky the bright disc of the Moon is shining with reflected sunlight, while a tiny smudge above the sea is sunlight reflecting from the dust and gas in the tail of Comet Panstarrs. Even the aurora’s ghostly curtains of glowing gas are ultimately powered by the ‘solar wind’ of subatomic particles given off by the Sun. Only the stars shine with their own light (Ingólfur Bjargmundsson)

'Eta Carinae and her Keyhole'. The Carina Nebula is a chaotic region of star formation several thousand light years from Earth. In the central part of the nebula, shown here, dense clouds of gas and dust are lit up by the light of newly born stars. One of these is a true giant – the star Eta Carinae right at the centre of this image. More than a hundred times as massive as the Sun, and millions of times brighter, Eta Carinae is unstable and will one day explode as a supernova (Michael Sidonio)

'Solar Max' A full disc image of the Sun showing detail such as dark filaments and sunspots which the naked eye cannot see (Paul Haese)