Over the coming weeks we will feature, in no particular order, each of the final 16 selected images and winners will be announced by Royal Museums Greenwich on 17 September. The winning images are to be showcased at the Royal Observatory Greenwich in an exhibition opening 18 September.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the globular cluster NGC 1854, a gathering of white and blue stars in the southern constellation of Dorado. NGC 1854 is located about 135,000 light-years away, in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of our closest cosmic neighbours and a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals a delicate blue group of stars — actually an irregular galaxy named IC 3583 — that sits some 30 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. This small galaxy is thought to be gravitationally interacting with one of its neighbours, the spiral Messier 90.
Our eighth nomination from the prestigious Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, an annual celebration of the most beautiful and spectacular visions of the cosmos by astrophotographers worldwide. Now in its seventh year, the 2015 competition received 2700 spectacular entries from over 60 countries and the winners will be announced 17 September.