The Andromedaebel is one of the most photographed celestial bodies. The spiral galaxy, which is reminiscent of our own Milky Way, can even be seen with the naked eye in dark areas, although it is 2.54 million light -years away. Nevertheless, the Royal Observatory Greenwich chose a photo of the core of the Andromeda System (M31) as the winner of the Astronomy photographer of the year 2025.
The winning photo of the Andromedanevel.
Photo Weitang Liang, Qi Yang and Chuhong Yu
The jury was deeply impressed by the special cut -out and especially the technical agility with which three young amateur astronomers from China, Weitang Liang, Qi Yang and Chuhong Yu had compiled the image. “Don’t show everything – that’s one of the strongest points of this photo,” said jury member László Francsics. “The Andromeda star system has already been photographed with telescopes in so many different ways that it is difficult to imagine that a new photo will add something that we have not yet seen. But it does, as an unusually dynamic composition with unparalleled detail that does not stand in the way.”
Moon Category: Nineteen combined photos of the moon that rises above the sea, whereby the light is distorted by the earth’s atmosphere.
Photo Marcella Giulia Pace
Sun Category: The chromosphere of the sun, a layer in the solar mood atmosphere.
Photo James Sinclair
The core of the Andromeda system is anything but easy to photograph. The large concentration of stars in the heart of the system is extremely clear to the dust clouds and stars around it, making those details easily emit.
The Weitang team made the recording in the summer of 2024, at a distance, with a telescope of the Astrocamp Observatory in Nerpio, Spain. That observatory is 1,600 meters height in one of the darkest places in Europe.
People and Space Category: ISS space station and the Moon caught in one image.
Photo Tom Williams
Young Competition: Orion, Paardopevevel and Vlamnevel.
Photo Daniele Borsari
With different color filters, Weitang and his team put together the perfect photo. They used the LRGB technique for this, in which contrast-rich black and white brightness image (L, Luminosity) is combined with three color recordings (RGB, red, green, blue). For this they used a total of 15 hours of exposure time. Over it, they still projected the deep red weak light of ionized hydrogen gas (H-Alfa), with an exposure time of 23 hours. In the composite photo, the three gave that color channel a warm red color.
Planets, Comets and Asteroid Category: The Comet 12p/Pons-Brooks, which can be seen once every 71 years.
Photo Dan Bartlett
Stars and Nebulae Category: M13, a cloud of around 300,000 stars out of 25,000 light years of the earth.
Photo Distant Luminosity Groupwe M13
Best Newcomer: A meteor travels a light trail through the atmosphere while the Andromedaebevel can be seen in the background.
Photo Yurui Gong and Xizhen Ruan
Skyscapes Category: In the Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park on the Zuidereiland of New Zealand, Tom Rae made an impressive panorama photo of the Melkweg with 62 welded images.
Photo Tom Rae