The 2020 Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition is now open for entries, the Royal Observatory Greenwich has announced. The annual astrophotography competition, which receives thousands of entries from across the globe, is entering its 12th year, and a new category has been added for 2020.
Astrophotographers wishing to enter their images to this year's competition will have until Friday 6 March 2020 to submit a maximum of 10 images across the various categories.
View our IIAPY galleries:
The winners will be announced at a ceremony at the National Maritime Museum in London on 10 September 2020. The overall winner will be awarded £10,000, with £1,500 being awarded to the winners of individual categories. Runners-up will receive £500 and highly commended entrants will receive £250.
This year's entrants will be able to submit for the first time into the new Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation, named after the astronomer Annie Maunder, a pioneer who captured images of the Sun while working at the Royal Observatory Greenwich in the late 19th century.
The category is open for images processed using pre-existing source data, such as the RAW data that is captured by NASA space probes and made available for public use.
For information on downloading and processing space mission data, read our 'how to' guide.
View the winners of the 2019 competition:
This year the competition also welcomes 3 new judges to the panel: Dr Emily Drabek-Maunder, an astrophysicist, astronomer and science communicator at the Royal Observatory Greenwich; László Francsics, chairman of the Hungarian Astrophotographers' Association and overall winner of the 2019 competition; and artist Susan Dergers.
Commenting on the new Annie Maunder Prize, Dr Drabek-Maunder says: "This prize opens up the competition to everyone, allowing them to engage with real observations that astronomers use to study the complex workings of the Universe. I’m incredibly excited to see how people take these images and use their creativity to process and reimagine them."
The complete list of categories in the 2020 competition is as follows:
Skyscapes: Landscape and cityscape images of twilight and the night sky featuring the Milky Way, star trails, meteor showers, comets, conjunctions, constellation rises, halos and noctilucent clouds alongside elements of earthly scenery.
Aurorae: Photographs featuring the Northern and Southern Lights.
People and Space: Photographs of the night sky including people or a human interest element.
Our Sun: Solar images including solar eclipses and transits.
Our Moon: Lunar images including lunar eclipses and occultation of planets.
Planets, Comets and Asteroids: Everything else in our solar system, including planets and their satellites, comets, asteroids and other forms of zodiacal debris.
Stars and Nebulae: Deep space objects within the Milky Way galaxy, including stars, star clusters, supernova remnants, nebulae and other intergalactic phenomena.
Galaxies: Deep space objects beyond the Milky Way galaxy, including galaxies, galaxy clusters, and stellar associations.
Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year: Pictures taken by budding astronomers under the age of 16 years.
The Sir Patrick Moore Prize for Best Newcomer: For the best photo by an amateur astrophotographer who has taken up the hobby in the last year and who has not entered an image into the competition
The Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation: for the best photo processed using pre-existing open source data.
For more information about the competition, visit the Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year website.
Keep up to date with the competition by following the Royal Museums Greenwich on Facebook or Twitter, or by using the hashtag #AstroPhoto2020.
