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Franklin Reyes / AP
The sun and atmospheric conditions combine to create a rainbow colored ring around the sun, known as a solar halo, in the skies above Havana, Cuba on Friday.
Sun halo lights up sky in Cuba
See 2012's top shots in astronomy
(c) Martin Pugh
This picture of the Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as M51, won top honors in the Deep Space category and the overall competition for 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year. The picture was entered by British-Australian photographer Martin Pugh. Here's what the Royal Observatory says: "This beautifully composed image of the Whirlpool Galaxy combines fine detail in the spiral arms with the faint tails of light that show its small companion galaxy being gradually torn apart by the gravity of its giant neighbour. A closer look shows even more distant galaxies visible in the background."
The Whirlpool Galaxy is one of the most photogenic spirals in the known universe, but not all whirlpools are created equal: Australian photographer Martin Pugh's view of the galaxy, also known as M51, was stunning enough to win him the top prize in the Royal Observatory's Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition.
"It's a remarkable achievement by an amateur astronomer; one of the best images of M51 that I've seen," Marek Kukula, the Royal Observatory's public astronomer and one of the contest judges, said in a news release. More than 800 entries were submitted, and the observatory announced the winners on Wednesday night.
Pugh said via Flickr that he was "absolutely delighted" by the honor — but for him, this isn't exactly a novel experience: He also won top honors in the 2009 competition.
Sir Patrick Moore, who's best-known for his British TV programs on astronomy, was impressed by the level of professionalism that today's amateurs bring to their sky snapshots. "Many of the pictures have been taken with equipment that was out of the range of the amateur many years ago," he said. "I also like the choice of subjects: photographing people and the night skies is very difficult. The entrants have done very well indeed."
Take a look at these winners, and then click your way through all the favorites at the Royal Museums Greenwich website. You can also scan through thousands of archived entries at the APotY Flickr gallery, and see the photo exhibition at the Royal Observatory through February.
(c) Masahiro Miyasaka
Japan's Masahiro Miyasaka won top honors in the Earth and Space category with this shot of Orion, Taurus and the Pleiades shining in the night sky above an icy landscape. The category is for photos that include "Earthly" things along with an astronomical subject. Miyasaka's entry, titled "Star Icefall," included a poem about the view: "The stars fell from the heavens. / The stars transformed themselves into an icicle. / Stars sleep eternally here."
(c) Chris Warren
The sun shines through the clouds during June's transit of Venus, as seen in this prize-winning photo from Britain's Chris Warren. The picture, captured through a hydrogen-alpha filter, won top honors in the Our Solar System category. Venus is visible as a black spot toward the sun's upper right edge."Our first and only glimpse of the transit before third contact, through a thin patch in the clouds at Blackheath in London," Warren writes.
(c) Jacob von Chorus
Fifteen-year-old Jacob von Chorus of Canada won top honors in the Young Astronomy category with this view of the Pleiades star cluster. "This image was a test to see what would happen with such a long exposure," von Chorus writes. "It was taken near dusk, with only two frames and an hour of exposure. This image has since become one of my best." The Young Astronomy category is for photographers under 16 years of age.
(c) Laurent Laveder
France's Laurent Laveder won a special award for this photo of a Venus-Jupiter conjunction on March 15, taken on the beach at Tréguennec in northwest France. "In this image, Venus is higher and on the right of Jupiter," Laveder writes. "I take my place in the lower right corner of the frame to complete the diagonal formed by me, the two planets, the Pleiades and Taurus. With my red flashlight on my head, I illuminate the beach. At low tide, the sand is wet and is reflecting the blockhouse." Laveder won the People and Space award, for photos that include people in a creative way.
(c) Lorand Fenyes
Hungary's Lóránd Fényes won the Best Newcomer award, reserved for photographers who have taken up the hobby in the past year and have not entered an image in the competition before. This picture shows the Elephant's Trunk nebula, seemingly uncoiling within the star cluster IC 1396 in the constellation Cepheus. "The Elephant's Trunk is my 34th photo," Fényes writes.
(c) Thomas Read
Twelve-year-old Thomas Read of Britain won the Robotic Scope prize with this view of the Sunflower Galaxy (M63), captured online using the Bradford Robotic Telescope in Tenerife. "I love this image, as it shows fantastic detail in the spiral arms," Read writes. "I was curious about the Sunflower Galaxy and how to maximize photographic results for a distant galaxy." The award goes to images taken by robotic or remote telescopes and then processed by the entrant.
More marvelous astronomy shots:
- Slideshow: The World at Night 2012
- MSN UK: Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2011
- Slideshow: Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2010
- All-time top 10 from Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Space Gallery at NBCNews.com
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ circles. To keep up with Cosmic Log and NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, sent to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters
A man photographs a full moon in Brazil on July 3, 2012.
More views of Venus passing in front of the sun
Kevin Frayer / AP
A bird comes into land atop one of the domes of the landmark Taj Mahal as Venus, begins to pass in front of the sun, as visible from Agra, India, June 6.
Ali Jarekji / Reuters
The planet Venus is seen as a black dot projected onto a girl's forehead as it makes its transit across the sun, in Amman, Jordan, June 6.
Erik De Castro / Reuters
Filipino students use negative film strips to watch Venus passing between the sun and the earth in Silang, Cavite south of Manila June 6.
Nikolay Doychinov / AFP - Getty Images
The planet Venus, seen as a black dot in transit across the sun during sunrise in Sofia on June 6.
Hussein Malla / AP
A Lebanese man looks through a protective viewing filter to watch the transit of planet Venus moving across the sun in Beirut, Lebanon, June 6. People around the world turned their attention to the daytime sky on Tuesday and early Wednesday in Asia to make sure they caught the rare sight of the transit of Venus. The next one won't be for another 105 years.
Panoramic image: Annular solar eclipse from Lassen Volcanic National Park in California
By John Brecher
We've published a number of photos from today's annular eclipse that happened in Asia and the western US, many of which show telephoto views of the moon's disk obscuring part of the sun. Take a step back with this panorama created by msnbc.com's John Brecher, stitched together from several images, to see some of the other sights that surround you during a solar eclipse: note the ring-shaped shadows on the white van made by light filtering through the trees, the reduced-contrast quality of the sunlight that's been shaped by the moon's edges, and the reactions of people as they use various optics to observe the phenomenon.
Click here to see the above image fullscreen.
Read all about today's eclipse in this piece by Alan Boyle in Cosmic Log.
You can see more images from this and earlier eclipses in PhotoBlog, and more panoramic images from other news stories.
NASA via AP
This image provided by NASA shows giant sunspot activity Thursday, Nov. 3, from a region on the sun that scientists are calling a "benevolent monster."
Sun is coming alive with a storm of solar flares
You have to hand it to the NASA scientist who came up with the name "benevolent monster."
Time-lapse trifecta! Photog captures meteor, Milky way and Northern Lights
Tommy Eliassen/Caters News Agency
A meteor streaks across the Milky Way adjacent to a display of the Northern Lights in Norway.
A meteor, the Milky Way and the Northern Lights. Capturing just one of these natural beauties in a photo is a feat many photographers would be proud of.
Amateur photographer Tommy Eliassen struck photo gold in this beautifully composed image he shot in Ifjord, Finnmark, Norway.
Eliassen made the photo on Sept. 25 using a Nikon D700 with a wide angle lens and long exposures between 25-30 seconds.
In an interview with Caters News, The 33-year-old, who capitalized on a narrow window of clear skies, talked about the experience.
I quickly went and took some pictures in a regular spot of mine, and thought to myself that I had got some good aurora shots and also some separate good milky way shots. But just as the clouds started to come in over the mountains I noticed this faint aurora lining up perfectly beside the milky way. Normally the lights from the aurora is much, much stronger than the lights from the stars, so getting the right exposure on both is difficult. But it was ideal conditions - almost once in a lifetime.
He was able to snap seven images of the scene before clouds moved back in.
"I was so focused on getting it right that I didn't think about it at the time. But afterwards I realized that this was something special and that it might be years before I get an opportunity like it again," he said.
See more amazing space shots in our slideshow: The Month in Space Pictures.
Large Millimeter Telescope peers into the heavens
According to a University of Massachusetts - Amherst press release:
"A radio telescope works just like your car radio," UMass Amherst astronomer Peter Schloerb explains. "There is an antenna to pick up the signals and when we tune over the frequency band we come across a nice strong signal at some points. These signals arise from the tumbling of molecules in giant clouds of gas and dust in the source galaxy. The main difference from a car radio, of course, is that our antenna is really, really big and our receiver is not only very sensitive but it also looks at all the frequencies at the same time. Finally, we record our signals in the computer rather than playing them on a speaker."
The Large Millimeter Telescope website offers more detail about the project.
Henry Romero / Reuters
The world's largest milimetric telescope (50 metres in diameter) is seen in the Sierra Negra Volcano, at an altitude of 15,000 ft., which lies between the states of Puebla and Veracruz June 20. The telescope, optimized for astronomical observations at millimeter wavelengths, is the result of a bi-national project between Mexico and the U.S., according to its website. The first observations were made at 3 mm on June 1, reported by Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica, Optica y Electronica (INAOE).
Henry Romero / Reuters
The world's largest milimetric telescope (50 metres in diameter) is seen in the Sierra Negra Volcano, at an altitude of 15,000 ft., which lies between the states of Puebla and Veracruz June 20. The telescope, optimized for astronomical observations at millimeter wavelengths, is the result of a bi-national project between Mexico and the U.S., according to its website. The first observations were made at 3 mm on June 1, reported by Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica, Optica y Electronica (INAOE).
Henry Romero / Reuters
INAOE's Director Alberto Carraminana speaks during an interview to Reuters television at the world's largest milimetric telescope (50 metres in diameter) at the Sierra Negra Volcano.
Nick Risinger / Skysurvey.org
Astrophotographer Nick Risinger stitched 37,440 night-sky exposures together into a spectacular, panoramic view of the Milky Way and the universe beyond.
Amateur astronomer creates a 360-degree panorama of the Milky Way
AP reports:
SEATTLE — Nick Risinger has always gazed up at the sky. But last year the amateur astronomer and photographer quit his day job as a Seattle marketing director and lugged six synchronized cameras about 60,000 miles to capture an image of the entire night sky.
Risinger, 28, set up his rack of cameras in high-elevation locales in the Western U.S. and South Africa, timing photo shoots around new moons when nights were long and dark. He programmed his six cameras to track the stars as they moved across the sky and simultaneously snapped thousands of photos.
He then stitched 37,440 exposures together into a spectacular, panoramic survey sky that he posted online two weeks ago.
Click here to read more.
NASA, ESA, J. Richard (CRAL) and J.-P. Kneib (LAM). Acknowledgement: Marc Postman (STScI)
Astronomers have uncovered one of the youngest galaxies in the distant universe, with stars that formed 13.5 billion years ago, a mere 200 million years after the Big Bang. The finding addresses questions about when the first galaxies arose, and how the early universe evolved.
Hubble discovers surprisingly young galaxy
A distant galaxy with stars that began forming just 200 million years after the big bang has been discovered. Read the full explanation on Cosmic Log.
Celebrating the equinox at the pyramids of Teotihuacan in Mexico
Alex Cruz / EPA
Hundreds of people are seen taking part on the Spring Equinox at the Teotihuacan archeological zone in Teotihuacan, Mexico, on 21 March 2011. According to some beliefs, on this day the ancestral spirits and the cosmic forces are invoked to purificate the body and the soul. EPA/Alex Cruz
Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP - Getty Images
A hot air balloon flies over the Sun Pyramid at the Teotihuacan archaelogical site during the Teotihuacan Hot Air Balloon Festival in San Juan de Teotihuacan, State of Mexico, on March 21, 2011. The festival is being held on the spring equinox.
Hubble delivers sparkling views of spiral galaxy
NASA released a dazzling image from the Hubble Space Telescope today, showing spiral galaxy NGC 2841.
According to their release, the image was taken in 2010 through four different filters on Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. Wavelengths range from ultraviolet light through visible light to near-infrared light. NGC 2841 lies 46 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear).
NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals a majestic disk of stars and dust lanes in this view of the spiral galaxy NGC 2841 released Thursday, Feb. 17, 2010.
A bright cusp of starlight marks the galaxy's center. Spiraling outward are dust lanes that are silhouetted against the population of whitish middle-aged stars. Much younger blue stars trace the spiral arms.
Notably missing are pinkish emission nebulae indicative of new star birth. It is likely that the radiation and supersonic winds from fiery, super-hot, young blue stars cleared out the remaining gas (which glows pink), and hence shut down further star formation in the regions in which they were born. NGC 2841 currently has a relatively low star formation rate compared to other spirals that are ablaze with emission nebulae.
Related content: The Month in Space | Today's best pictures