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This year's best space images (pictures)

Britain's Royal Observatory honors spectacular images of space and the Earth in its latest Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest.

Tim Hornyak
Crave freelancer Tim Hornyak is the author of "Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots." He has been writing about Japanese culture and technology for a decade. E-mail Tim.
Tim Hornyak
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1 of 11 Mark Gee

Moon Silhouettes

For the past four years, Britain's Royal Observatory has held a contest for the best astronomy photographs from around the world. Its picks for 2013, drawn from 1,200 entries, are utterly eye-popping. Here's a selection of honorees.

This incredible shot by Australia's Mark Gee won a special prize in the category of People and Space. As Gee describes "Moon Silhouettes": "People usually gather on Mount Victoria Lookout in Wellington, New Zealand, to take in the view of the surrounding city below. But on this particular day the moon rose right behind the lookout, revealing the silhouettes of the onlookers.

"This photo was shot from over 2 km (1.2 miles) away on the other side of Wellington city, on the day after the full moon. It was not just being in the right place at the right time; I had been planning for this shoot for over a year."

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2 of 11 Fredrik Broms

Green Energy

"With this image I wanted to show the magic and dramatic feeling of being drawn into the whirlpool of a powerful Northern Lights corona," says Norway's Fredrik Broms, runner-up in the Earth and Space category of the Royal Observatory's annual space photography contest.

"With its enormous power, it almost resembles an artist's impression of what the fate of light around a black hole might look like. The illumination of the snow is created by the strong moonlight."

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3 of 11 Man-To Hui

Corona Composite of 2012: Australian Totality

This winning image in the Our Solar System category shows the sun's wispy corona during an eclipse. "I did not push very hard to extract the very subtle details in the corona, but did slightly to reconstruct the view observed by the naked eye as vividly as I could," says Chinese photographer Man-To Hui. "I spent a lot of time admiring the corona; it is beyond my description."
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4 of 11 Adam Block

Celestial Impasto: sh2–239

"Imagine the brush that could express the delicate wisps of dust and the opaque, cold, dark heart of this molecular cloud," says Adam Block, winner in the Deep Space category. Shot with a telescope, this nebula image had an exposure time of 15 hours.
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5 of 11 Mark Gee

Guiding Light to the Stars

Mark Gee also won the overall contest and top honors in the Earth and Space category for "Guiding Light to the Stars," a spectacular view of the Milky Way arching over the coast of the North Island of New Zealand. The brightest light in the image, seen at right, comes from the Cape Palliser Lighthouse.
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6 of 11 Sam Cornwell

Venus Transit, Foxhunter’s Grave, Welsh Highlands

Sam Cornwell of the UK took the Sir Patrick Moore Prize for Best Newcomer with this amazing shot of Venus transiting the sun. Here's how he described the image: "I am a complete amateur with regard to astrophotography. I saw the Venus transit of 2012 as a great opportunity to attempt to photograph one of the rarer spectacles of the solar system. I took a group of friends and my camera equipment to the highest ground I knew locally, Foxhunter's Grave in the Brecon Beacons.

"We arrived at about 2 a.m. to set up. It was cold, raining, windy, and cloudy. Within a couple of hours, the area had filled up with 'real astronomers' who knew what they were doing. I felt like such a novice but got stuck right in, with my lens trained on the horizon where the sun would be appearing. It was truly one of the most amazing sights I have ever seen."

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7 of 11 Jacob Marchio

The Milky Way Galaxy

The winner in the Young Astronomy Photographer category, 14-year-old Jacob Marchio of the US, shot this view of the Milky Way with a Nikon D3100 camera and an 18mm lens. It shows the glow of tens of billions of stars and dust lanes toward the center of the galaxy.
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8 of 11 David Kingham

Snowy Range Perseid meteor shower

A highly commended image in the Earth and Space category, this starscape by David Kingham shows the Perseid meteor shower, shot from Medicine Bow National Forest in Wyoming. The photo is made from 23 images shot over seven hours, from nightfall to sunrise.
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9 of 11 Fredrik Broms

Icy Visitor

Norway's Fredrik Broms also received a commendation in the Earth and Space category for this view of Comet C/2011 L4 Panstarrs before it set behind a Norwegian fjord. With its nucleus of ice and rock, the comet spat out a tail of gas hundreds of thousands of kilometers long as it approached the sun in 2013.
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10 of 11 Damian Peach

Saturn at Opposition

Damian Peach of the UK captured this exquisite image of Saturn from Mount Olympus in Cyprus at about 6,200 feet above sea level using a Celestron SCT telescope. Revealing details of the planet's rings and atmosphere, it received a commendation in the Our Solar System category. The Royal Observatory noted: "Images with this much clarity challenge our ideas of what can be achieved with amateur telescopes."
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11 of 11 Tom O’Donoghue

Rho Ophiuchi and Antares Nebulae

These beautiful nebulae shine like jewels in the depths of space, and it's no surprise that capturing them was a complex feat. Tom O'Donoghue of Ireland had to spend 60 hours of exposures on these faint gems due to their altitude in the Spanish sky and some clouds.

"The dust can reflect the light of nearby stars, as seen in the blue and yellow regions," the Royal Observatory noted. "It can also block and absorb the light of more distant stars, appearing brown and black in this image. To the right, a bright star is ionizing a cloud of hydrogen gas and causing it to glow red, while below it, far in the distance, is a globular cluster containing thousands of stars."

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