Babak had a lot to say about the pictures and his "The World at Night" project, and I thought the best way to pass it along would be in this comment space. I also want to express my gratitude to him and all the TWAN photographers for sharing their work. Here are edited excerpts from Babak's email:

Changes in the submitted photos
With the fast-developing DSLR cameras on one hand and astronomy outreach programs on the other hand, there is a fast-growing number of people with interest in sky imaging. The very positive side of this is increasing public attention to the night sky.

According to the contest rules, all images were taken since the beginning of 2011. This is to feature new images, new emerging photographers, the latest important sky events from around the globe, and a new look at the light pollution situation in the world.

This year we had many images of the great Comet Lovejoy which made a spectacular display in the southern skies during December 2011. It was a surprise to astronomers as well, as this icy body passed through the hot atmosphere of the sun (the solar corona) and survived. As it moved away from the sun it became a spectacular sight in the southern hemisphere. The first winner of our Beauty of Night Sky category is an image made by Chinese photographer Jia Hao who decided to rush to the deserts of Australia right after this news about the comet. Such bright comets appear once or twice each decade. The previous one was Comet McNaught in 2007 and before that Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997.

There were also an increasing number of aurora images. Many of them were made during March 2012 with the suddenly increased solar activity during the right time to view aurora in high altitudes. As we approach the next solar maximum in spring 2013 the solar activity is gradually rising and creating more beautiful aurora activities.

Natural-looking sky images
There is a fast-rising issue with Earth and sky images. Unfortunately, a majority of photographers who got interested in nightscape photography are less familiar with astronomy, and the natural look and color of the night sky. So many landscape astrophotos today are intensely saturated, unnaturally contrasted, and sometimes with totally wrong colors of the sky. We had stunning compositions and amazing landscapes at night, some made by famous photographers, which were ruled out of the contest simply because they were "overcooked" in processing. This is a very interesting issue, to inform people and photographers about the real colors in the sky, and how it naturally should look in the images. We received images of the Milky Way in all the colors of spectrum. Some processed the colors to romantic blue, some others made them purple and red, and few resulted in a natural-looking pale-yellow Milky Way. In the era of film this was not a major issue, but today everything is possible in digital processing. If we consider the night sky as a part of our nature, it should be treated the same way in nightscape photography.

If you publish a photo of a blue sunset, it’s clear that either there is something badly wrong with your camera/processing or you were the first human on Mars to see this view! Or when you submit a color saturated image or a digital montage to a nature photo contest, it will be obviously removed by all judges, but in night sky photography most of people are unfortunately unfamiliar with the natural colors and look of the sky. Public, publishers, and media get excited with such exotic-looking images of sky without asking if this is anywhere close to reality in term of photo originality, and this further promotes photographers to create fake-looking night sky images.

The real winners are not those with exotic colors and saturation but the photos which were made in the right place at the right time to capture a scene that is not easily repeated with the same configuration of the Earth and sky.

Colors are not a major issue for deep sky photographers. They are also rules for that, but astronomers and deep-sky imagers use a wide range of filters, capturing only a narrow band of the spectrum, often not even visible to human eye. In Earth and sky photography we capture things which are mostly visible to unaided eyes, and the main effort is to show what was experienced by the eyes of photographer at the scene.

Here are some very good examples of natural-looking sky and the Milky Way color:

http://www.davidmalin.com/fujii/source/af2-02_72.html

http://www.davidmalin.com/fujii/source/af2-03_72.html

http://www.twanight.org/newTWAN/photos.asp?ID=3002596

http://www.twanight.org/newTWAN/photos.asp?ID=3003231

http://www.twanight.org/newTWAN/photos.asp?ID=3002814

http://www.twanight.org/newTWAN/photos.asp?ID=3003222

I'm very pleased that our highly experienced judging team in the 2012 contest voted for more natural-looking images. This was specially thanks to David Malin (twanight.org/malin), who is widely considered to be the world's most accomplished sky photographer, using large telescopes for scientific imaging for many years but also doing wide-field imaging of night sky. Malin raised this growing concern of fake color astroimages to me few years ago, but the issue dramatically enlarged with new generation of highly sensitive DSLR cameras at affordable cost and a new stream of photographers who are interested in nightscape imaging but may have little knowledge about the sky itself.

On light pollution
According to the contest theme of “Dark Skies Importance,” the submitted photos were judged in two categories: “Beauty of the Night Sky” and “Against the Lights.” The selected images are those most effective in impressing public on both how important and amazing the starry sky is and how it affects our lives and also how bad the problem of light pollution has become. Light pollution (excessive light that scatters to the sky instead of illuminating the ground) is not just an astronomer's problem. It is also a major waste of energy and like any other form of pollution disrupts ecosystems and has adverse health effects.

The winners and notable images of this contest shows of the main statements of TWAN: the night sky is an essential part of our nature, where its important to preserve its natural beauty. Human has inspired by the starry sky for millennia. But today most city skies are virtually empty of stars. About 2/3 of human population today live under light polluted skies, not dark enough to see the Milky Way. Seeing a real dark sky is a must-see experience in the life of each of us, moments that you will not forget in your entire life. The patchy glow of light in such dark skies is the galactic plane, billions of stars in our home galaxy shimmering from the far above the horizon of a little planet. Watching the spectacular arch of the Milky Way rising over the horizon sounds like a scene from science fiction today to most of the kids and young people, but this is still easy to experience in preserved dark sites.

You see a big contrast in some of the notable images of the contest. In some images, you can see a stunning Milky Way and elegant starry skies. In others, there is only one star in view, which is in fact a bright planet, the last standing object in a totally vanished urban sky. The comparison of these two is the main message of the contest: what is gone with the lights, the beauty we are losing today in urban areas.

The contest submissions show that more people are aware of dark-sky movement, thanks to growing activities in this field from organizations such as the International Dark Sky Association, or projects like Dark Sky Parks, UNESCO starlight reserves, Globe at Night (www.globeatnight.org), as well as the growing industry of astrotourism.

Under One Sky
Another important message of the contest comes to the mind when viewing all the photos from across the globe, showing the same sky, one single roof above all humanity. Under this roof all nations are just one family in one home. The night sky is perhaps a bridge that can brings us all together.

What is the TWAN-style photography
TWAN style — showing both the Earth and the sky — combines elements of the night sky set in the backdrop of the Earth horizon with a notable location or landmark. This style of photography is called “landscape astrophotography.” This is similar to general "Nightscape Photography" but with more attention to the sky, astronomical perspectives, and celestial phenomena.

Suggestion for new photographers
Starting Earth and sky imaging is fast and easy, using off-the-shelf digital SLR cameras. But for those who aim for high-level landscape astrophotos, there are challenges too. You need to be out for starry adventures. Although the best equipment helps a lot, the secret key in nightscape photography is being “in the right place, at the right time.” Knowledge of astronomy and skygazing together with artistic point of view creates an enchanting landscape astrophoto which has both the beauty and science aspect; a fine art and a powerful tool for astronomy promoters and educators.

I highly recommend avoiding the habit of "overcooked" processing and composite landscape astrophotos. Digital sandwiched images made of photos by different lenses and exposures or montage of day-time and night-time frames, presented as photographs of a real natural scene, is not the way to go. While there is art and beauty in such composites, they are appreciated in the category of illustration and photomontage and not natural photographs of sky. The true challenge of nightscape photography is capturing the beauty of the earth and sky, avoiding montage, deep processing, or altering the natural view and colors in the sky. We certainly don’t want to use our processing talents and camera capabilities to create images that look fake to experienced eyes.