BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Fabulous photos - winners in Sky Photo Contest

March 25 - April 30

Entries are now being accepted for the 8th International Earth and Sky Photo Contest on Dark Skies Importance. There will be up to 10 winners over two categories with the top prize usually a telescope.

TWAN (The World at Night) is coordinating it, in conjunction with GAM (Global Astronomy Month) and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. It's free to enter and open to anyone of any age, anywhere in the world. The winners will be announced in May.

The photos have to be created in the "TWAN style" - showing both the Earth and the sky - by combining elements of the night sky against a backdrop of a beautiful, historic, or notable location or landmark. The contest theme, "Dark Skies Importance," has two categories: "Beauty of the Night Sky" and "Against the Lights." One is to impress people on how important and amazing the starry sky is and the other is to raise awareness on how bad the problem of light pollution has become.

Click here for more information and submission guidelines.

Here is last year's overall winner. It's Alex Conu's photo of the northern lights in Norway. He took it from the top of Mount Reinebringen, in Lofoten. It was selected as the winner in the Against the Lights category as well as overall contest winner. It's superb.

The Earth and Sky Photo contest for 2017 closed at the end of April. The results will be announced next month. There are a lot of entries for this competition and judging it is quite an undertaking.

Here is the 2016 winner of the category "Against the Lights" and overall winner of the competition. "Northern Lights above Lofoten" was presented by Alex Conu, originally from Romania, but now living in Norway. We see the lights of a coastal village and filling the sky a magnificent aurora borealis.

Stephanie Ye from China was the first-place winner in 2016 the “Beauty of the Night Sky” category with her "The Tail of the Aurora". She took the picture in March 2015 from northern Norway.

Have a look at "Viking Lights", the photo-composite winner in the 2016 "Beauty of the Night Sky" category. U.S. photographer Adam Woodworth took this in Newfoundland, Canada in June 2015. Sublime.

Here's second place in the 2016 "Beauty of the Night Sky" category: "The Photographer" by Austrian Nicholas Roemmelt. It was taken in March 2015 from Stockiness, Iceland.

"Milky Way Like a Dolphin". The photo-composite 2016 winner in the “Against the Lights” category is by Alvin Wu from China. The rising arc of the Milky Way is captured on Mauna Kea observatory, Hawai‘i in April 2015 with the Gemini North telescope in the foreground.

Fantastic for those of us - i.e., most of the world! - who can't see the Milky Way at all.

I've been enjoying looking through these wonderful photographs, but have to admit that I've yet to find any sign of the winners for this year. I guess the judging has been even more difficult than I'd suggested in an earlier post.

To be continued when the results come out .......

I don't know when the winners were finally announced - I forgot about them until a few minutes ago.

First Prize in the category "Beauty of the Night Sky" went to Camilo Jaramillo (Colombia) for "100 Steps Forward". He photographed it in the Huacachina Desert in Peru.

The winner in the category "Against the Lights" was Ulrich Beinert (Germany), who is an airline pilot who's provided a blinding view of Brussels. The Belgians don't come off very well in his estimation.

Beinert says
Brussels, capital of Belgium, the European country that to this day completely illuminates many of its highways and main roads. From space and from the air, the vast network of roadways stands out from the surrounding countries. Here, Brussels is seen in the foreground from the cockpit of an airliner, the soft evening twilight colors with the crescent Moon in the background. Belgium has almost no refuges for those wanting to see the night sky in its original beauty, human heritage of hundreds of generations and inspiration to millions. Without our view of the night sky, where would our literature, our science be today? We are the first generations to live in a permanent twilight and I wonder what consequences this will have in the arts and sciences!

The winner in "Beauty Of The Night Sky - Composite Category" is "Raining Stars Shooting Down" by Haitong Yu (China).
He says

The winner in "Against the Lights - Composite Category" is "The Climb" by Nicholas Römmelt (Austria).

It's a splendid picture - to me, it looks almost like a painting.

The "Beauty Of The Night Sky - Time Lapse & Sequence Category" was won by Dario Giannobile (Sicily, Italy) for "The Missing Observer".

Giannobile writes

In the category "Against The Lights - Time Lapse & Sequence", the winning image was "Festival Of Lights" by Amirreza Kamkar (Iran).

The picture was taken on a trip to Nepal.

Some of Nicholas Römmelt's prize winners have already shown up in this thread. Here is his "Out Of This World", winner in the Beauty of the Night Sky - Aurora category. He captured this beautiful aurora over Senja Island in Norway.

Sigurdur William Brynjarsson from Iceland won in the new category, Against the Lights - Aurora. He photographed "When Lights Collide" in Vatnsleysustrond, Iceland. It's a dramatic and beautiful picture.

Brynjarsson says

Mona, phenomenal photo.