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.
Astronomers have uncovered the strongest evidence yet that an enormous X-shaped structure made of stars lies within the central bulge of the Milky Way. Previous computer models, observations of other galaxies, and observations of our own Galaxy have suggested that the X-shaped structure existed, but no one had observed it directly.
Dark smudges almost block out a rich star field in this new image of the Coalsack Nebula captured by the 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. This huge, dusky object forms a conspicuous silhouette against the bright, starry band of the Milky Way and has been known to people in the Southern Hemisphere for as long as our species has existed.
An international team led by a researcher from Hiroshima University has succeeded in revealing the detailed structure of a massive ionised gas outflow streaming from the starburst galaxy NGC 6240, 350 million light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. The team used the Suprime-Cam mounted on the 8.2-metre Subaru Telescope on Maunakea in Hawaii.
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