Gorgeous galaxies and stunning stars make up this selection of pictures from the shortlisted entries for this year’s Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year award. The winners will be announced on 15 September, and an exhibition of the winning images will be will be displayed in a free exhibition at the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Astronomy Centre from 17 September. Here: “Seven Magic Points”. The rusty red swirls of the circular, iron sculpture Seven Magic Points in Brattebergan, Norway mirror the rippling aurora above. (Photo by Rune Engebø/Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2016/National Maritime Museum)

Sharafkhaneh port and lake Urmia. Masoud Ghadiri (Iran). The summer Milky Way is very prominent in this photo. On the galaxy zone, Saturn is located besides the Lagoon nebula. On the right of the horizon, you can see the extreme light pollution of Urmia, which is caused by ever-increasing city development. (Photo by Masoud Ghadiri/National Maritime Museum)

Soap Bubble Structures by Kym Cox. Bubbles optimise space and minimise their surface area for a given volume of air. This phenomenon makes them a useful tool in many areas of research, in particular, materials science and “packing” – how things fit together. Bubble walls drain under gravity, thin at the top, thick at the bottom, which interferes with travelling lightwaves to create bands of colour. Black spots show the wall is too thin for interference colours, indicating the bubble is about to burst. (Photo by Kym Cox/2019 Science Photographer of the Year/RPS)

Cally Whitham is a photographic artist from New Zealand with romantic notions of finding value in banality. Her work identifies aesthetic value where none appears apparent and often invites viewers to reflect on our rural beginnings. via Photography Blogs.

I’m really enjoying this series of photos by photographer Lucas Zimmermann captured on a foggy night near Weimar, Germany. You can see more from the series over on Behance.

These zoo animals take on an altogether more sinister look after posing for a set of moody black and white portraits. Alex Teuscher has brought out the dark side in a range of exotic creatures with his artistic project which took two years to complete. Photo: White tiger. (Photo by Alex Teuscher/BNPS)

“Radicondoli is a comune in the Province of Siena in the Italian region Tuscany, located about 60 km southwest of Florence and about 25 km southwest of Siena”. – Wikipedia. (Photo by Marco Sgarbi)

Photographer David Emitt Adams creates tintypes on discarded cans he collects from the Sonoran Desert. In his artist statement, Adams says that some are more than four decades old, which have earned a deep reddish-brown, rusty coloration. (Photo by David Emitt Adams)