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)

Ecuador-based illustrator and art director Javier Pérez has been posting a fun series of photo illustrations over on his Instagram account. The simple ideas mix everyday objects with line drawings, creating balloons out of grapes, porcupine quills out of nails, or light bulbs out of balloons

Terence Chang's (aka exxonvaldez) long exposure photographs, capturing only streaks of light as airplanes arrive and depart from the San Francisco airport, certainly are stunning. There's just something so magical about seeing the various patterns created in the sky, even over a relatively short amount of time.

Young African lion Asali (R) jumps for a bungee-ball toy as her father Jambo or “Bruiser” looks on at the opening of a savannah-themed makeover of the lion enclosure at Taronga Zoo August 29, 2006 in Sydney, Australia. The renovation includes sandstone rock features, a wading pool, and red ochre crushed granite substrate in a move to make the enclosure more closely resemble the natural habitat of the African savannah. (Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images)

American vedette, burlesque dancer, model, and businesswoman Heather Renée Sweet, known professionally as Dita Von Teese looking stunning while advertising new items from her own underwear range in the last decade of January 2023. (Photo by TNI Press Ltd)

The snow leopard (Panthera uncia syn. Uncia uncia) is a large cat native to the mountain ranges of Central and South Asia. It is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species because as of 2003, the size of the global population was estimated at 4,080-6,590 adults, of which fewer than 2,500 individuals may reproduce in the wild.

An infrared portrait from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope which shows generations of stars is seen in this undated NASA handout image released February 14, 2013. In this wispy star-forming region, called W5, the oldest stars can be seen as blue dots in the centers of the two hollow cavities (other blue dots are background and foreground stars not associated with the region). Red shows heated dust that pervades the region's cavities, while green highlights dense clouds. (Photo by NASA/Reuters/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian/Handout)

Participants hold red scarves as they celebrate the “Chupinazo” marking the start at noon sharp of the San Fermin Festival at Castle square in Pamplona, northern Spain on July 6, 2013. Ten of thousands of people packed Pamplona's streets for a drunken kick-off to Spain's best-known fiesta: the nine-day San Fermin bull-running festival. (Photo by Pedro Armestre/AFP Photo)