Deadline for APY14 Approaches PLUS People's Choice Winners 2021

Less than two weeks are left to enter the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 14 competition run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich, supported by Liberty Specialty Markets and in association with BBC Sky at Night Magazine. From beginners to professionals, photographers will need to submit their pictures by 12pm (GMT) on 4 March to be in with a chance of winning the prestigious award. The overall winner will take home a top prize of £10,000 and see their image take pride of place in the accompanying exhibition, which opens at the National Maritime Museum on 15 September 2022.

Each entrant can submit up to ten images to the competition, with participants at all skill levels in with a chance of winning a prize. The competition has nine main categories, such as Aurorae (images featuring the Northern and Southern Lights), Skyscapes (astronomical subjects like the Milky Way or stars alongside earthly scenery), Stars and Nebulae (photographs of deep space objects within the Milky Way galaxy, including stars, star clusters, supernova remnants, nebulae and other intergalactic phenomena) and Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year (for entrants under 16 years old).

There are also two special prizes, The Prize for Best Newcomer, awarded to an amateur photographer who has not entered the competition before and the Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation, for the best photo processed using pre-existing open source data.

Photographers can enter their images online by visiting www.rmg.co.uk/astrocomp, where full competition rules and some top tips on photographing everything from star trails to galaxies and nebulae are also available (entry fees apply, for more information check the competition rules).

After the competition closes, an esteemed panel of judges will select the winners. The winners will be announced at an online awards ceremony on Thursday 15 September, and an exhibition of the winning images will open to the public at the National Maritime Museum on Saturday 17 September 2022.

Astronomy Photographer of the Year: People’s Choice Awards 2021

The mystical ‘Alien Throne’ by Marcin Zajac is the winner of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year: People’s Choice Awards 2021. Shot in one of the most remote areas of the United States, the rock spire also known as ‘hoodoo’ is part of the Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wilderness in the San Juan Basin in New Mexico. The nearest town is 50 miles away, so the photographer camped under the dark skies to capture the glorious Milky Way arched above the majestic terrain.

The second place award goes to Roshaan Nadeem for ‘The Annular Eclipse over Lahore’ that depicts the different stages of the annular eclipse in the summer of 2020, over Lahore in Pakistan, taken with a handheld smartphone. ‘Retrograde Mars and Uranus’ by Tunç Tezel wins the third place award. Tezel captured the retrograde motions of the planets Mars and Uranus on 38 different nights.

The winning images were chosen from a shortlist of 24 images, selected by the Royal Museums Greenwich from 4,500 images submitted to the thirteenth annual competition in 2021.

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. The winners of Royal Observatory’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year 14 will be announced at an online award ceremony on 15 September 2022. The winning photographs will be exhibited in the National Maritime Museum alongside a selection of shortlisted images. General admission will be £10.

2. The overall winner will receive £10,000. Winners of all other categories and the Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year will receive £1,500. The winner of the Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year will also receive a Celestron Astromaster 130EQ MD, kindly donated by Celestron. There are also prizes for runners-up (£500) and highly commended (£250) entries. The Special Prize winners will receive £750. All of the winning entries will receive a one year subscription to BBC Sky at Night Magazine.

3. The Royal Observatory Greenwich is home of Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian and one of the most important historic scientific sites in the world. Since its founding in 1675, Greenwich has been at the centre of the measurement of time and space, and visitors today can still stand on the historic Prime Meridian line. The Observatory galleries and Peter Harrison Planetarium help unravel the extraordinary phenomena of time, space and astronomy. In 2018 the Royal Observatory acquired the Annie Maunder Astrographic Telescope (AMAT), the first new telescope to be installed in Greenwich in over 60 years, marking a new era for the world-famous site and restoring its status as a working Observatory.

The Royal Observatory Greenwich is part of Royal Museums Greenwich which also incorporates the National Maritime Museum, the Queen’s House and Cutty Sark. This unique collection of museums and heritage buildings, which form a key part of the Maritime Greenwich UNESCO World Heritage Site, welcomes over two and a half million British and international visitors a year and is also a major centre of education and research. The mission of Royal Museums Greenwich is to enrich people’s understanding of the sea, the exploration of space, and Britain's role in world history. For more information visit www.rmg.co.uk

4. Liberty Specialty Markets offers specialty and commercial insurance and reinsurance products across key UK, European, Middle East, US, Bermuda, Asia Pacific & Latin America markets. We provide brokers and insureds with a broad product range through both the Company and Lloyd’s markets and have over 2,000 employees in approximately 60 offices.

At Liberty Mutual, we believe progress happens when people feel secure. By providing protection for the unexpected and delivering it with care, we help people embrace today and confidently pursue tomorrow.

In business since 1912, and headquartered in Boston, Liberty Mutual Insurance is the sixth largest global property and casualty insurer based on 2020 gross written premium. Liberty Mutual Insurance ranks 71st on the Fortune 100 list of largest corporations in the U.S. based on 2020 revenue. As of December 31, 2020, we had $43.8 billion in annual consolidated revenue.

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5. About BBC Sky at Night Magazine

BBC Sky at Night Magazine is Britain's best-selling astronomy magazine, with a combined print and digital circulation of 20,788 copies a month. skyatnightmagazine.com has 700,000 visits a month and reaches 90,000 organic social media followers through Facebook and Twitter. The magazine is available on Apple Newsstand, Google Play and Zinio as well as in print, and is media partner of the annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich. With writing from the world’s leading astronomers and science communicators, BBC Sky at Night Magazine complements one of the world's longest running TV programmes, BBC Four’s The Sky at Night, and is published by Our Media Ltd (an Immediate Media company) under licence from BBC Worldwide.

6. Royal Observatory Greenwich, in partnership with Collins, will be publishing Astronomy Photographer of the Year, Collection 11 in September 2022. It is the official publication for the Astronomy Photography of the Year competition and will showcase breathtaking images of space and the night sky from the 2022 competition shortlist. Photographs will be accompanied by full details including each photographer’s information, location where photographs were taken and technical specifications.

Last year’s prize winning images are still available to buy: Astronomy Photographer of the Year, Collection 10 / RRP £25.00 / Hardback / Published September 2021 / Royal Museums Greenwich online shop. For further information or to request review copies please contact: Rebecca Jones / Rebecca.Jones@harpercollins.co.uk / DL: 0208 307 4288

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Media interviews:

The Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Modern Astronomy team is dedicated to the public understanding of science and its experts are available to give radio and TV interviews on astronomy - at the historic Observatory site or in the studio.

The Observatory offers a short notice service to media stations looking for comment/ interviews on any aspect of modern astronomy - discussing new discoveries and space missions, telling people what to look for in this month's night sky, or talking about old favourites like black holes, is there life beyond Earth and the origins of the universe.

For further information or images, please contact:

Royal Observatory Greenwich Press Office Tel: 020 8312 6790/6667/6545

or Email: press@rmg.co.uk