This year’s Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition received a record 2700 entries by astrophotographers from 59 countries around the world. These astonishing pictures reveal fresh perspectives on astrophotography favourites alongside some of the great astronomical events of the last year.
We will showcase the winning images from all 11 categories over the next few days, but if you wish to see them all together on display, the Royal Observatory Greenwich has an exhibition open 18 September 2015 — 26 June 2016. Hours: 10.00–17.00, entry is free.
Australian astronomers are in the process of collecting the spectra of a million stars across the Milky Way in a project to study galactic evolution. In the process, they hope to track down at least some of the sun’s lost siblings.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is now closer to the Sun than any spacecraft ever built as it moves in for the first of seven dips into the star’s outer atmosphere, or corona, for unprecedented close-range observations.
A binary star known as KIC 9655129 observed by NASA’s Kepler space telescope is known to produce superflares, thousands of times more powerful than those ever recorded on the Sun. Research led by the University of Warwick suggests the underlying physics of KIC 9655129’s superflares and solar flares might be the same, supporting the idea that our Sun could also produce such phenomena.
