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Overall winner and winner of 'Earth & Space' category. 'Guiding Light to the Stars' by Mark Gee, Australia. The skies of the Southern Hemisphere offer a rich variety of astronomical highlights. The central regions of the Milky Way Galaxy, 26,000 light years away, appear as a tangle of dust and stars in the central part of the image. Two even more distant objects are visible as smudges of light in the upper left of the picture. These are the Magellanic Clouds, two small satellite galaxies in orbit around the Milky Way. (Mark Gee/ Royal Observatory’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2013)
Overall winner and winner of 'Earth & Space' category. 'Guiding Light to the Stars' by Mark Gee, Australia. The skies of the Southern Hemisphere offer a rich variety of astronomical highlights. The central regions of the Milky Way Galaxy, 26,000 light years away, appear as a tangle of dust and stars in the central part of the image. Two even more distant objects are visible as smudges of light in the upper left of the picture. These are the Magellanic Clouds, two small satellite galaxies in orbit around the Milky Way. (Mark Gee/ Royal Observatory’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2013)
A beautiful shot of the Milky Way has won the prestigious Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2013. Now in its fifth year, the competition received a record number of entries - more than 1200 from 49 countries. All of the category winners, runners-up and commended images will be exhibited at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, until 23 February 2014.