A squirrel fights for its life in the bill of a great blue heron at the Mission Trails Regional Park in California in the second decade of April 2025. (Phoot by Decker Nomura/Solent News & Photo Agency)

“Kids of Sapa”. Four little beautiful Hmong girls from Lao Chai Village, near Sapa, Vietnam. (Photo and caption by Felipe Hanower/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

Vivid colors and bizarre shapes come together in a false-color image that could be an illustration for a fantasy story. This labyrinth of exotic features winds its way along the edge of Russia’s Chaunskaya Bay in northeastern Siberia, seen as a vivid blue half-circle at the bottom of the image Two major rivers, the Chaun and Palyavaam, flow into the bay, which in turn opens into the Arctic Ocean. Ribbon lakes and bogs are present throughout the area, created by depressions left by receding glaciers. (Photo by USGS/NASA)

A fireball erupts from a 16-inch gun on the battleship USS Wisconsin during a live fire exercise in the Persian Gulf, October 13, 1990. The ship is in the Gulf as part of Operation Desert Shield. (Photo by John Gaps III/AP Photo)

An area of vegetation can be seen amongst drought effected farmland in South Australia, November 12, 2015. A pioneering Australian scheme to improve the management of water in the world's driest inhabited continent is facing its first real test as an intensifying El Nino threatens crops and builds tensions between farmers and environmentalists. An El Nino, a warming of sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific, is already causing drought and other extreme weather, affecting millions of people across parts of the world, and experts warn that the intensifying weather pattern could emerge as one of the strongest on record. (Photo by David Gray/Reuters)

A man sleeps between tombstones in front of his single-room home on a hot night in the Cairo Necropolis, Egypt, October 13, 2015. In the sprawling Cairo Necropolis, known as the City of the Dead, life and death are side by side. Amid a housing crisis in Egypt, and with the population of greater Cairo estimated at about 20 million, people count themselves lucky to have a place to call home in the graveyards that date back hundreds of years. (Photo by Asmaa Waguih/Reuters)

Model Isabeli Fontana poses after the 2014 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in London December 2, 2014. (Photo by Luke MacGregor/Reuters)

The Royal Observatory just announced its Astronomy Photographer Of The Year 2013 winners. Australian photographer Mark Gee was chosen among a thousand amateur and professional photographers around the globe to win the top title. His work is part of an exhibition of the winning photographers, which opened on Sept. 19 at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. The Royal Observatory shared with us the winners and notable mentions of the competition. Their descriptions of the prizewinners can be found below the images.