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.

“Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London with 1,074,300 residents (2011 census), an increase of 96,000 over the previous decade. The city lies within the West Midlands conurbation, the third most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a population of 2,440,986 (2011 census) of which the Birmingham built-up area was 1,085,810. Its metropolitan area is the United Kingdom's second most populous with 3,683,000 residents”. – Wikipedia. (Photo by Adrian Saker)

“LSD Photo Advertising Studio is comprised of Marco and Paolo. They are photographers who compose, shoot and post-produce all of their images together. For over ten years, they have been creating images from start to finish. Marco and Paolo have different backgrounds of experience: Paolo started as an illustrator then a photographer, and now he’s at Marco’s side and in his head throughout shooting. In turn, Paolo does all the post-production with Marco in his head and at his side. Marco has always worked as photographer”. – Tim Mitchell

Portrait category, bronze award winner. Purple-crested Turaco Gallirex porphyreolophus. Lower Mpushini, near Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. (Photo by Richard Flack/Bird Photographer of the Year 2022)

The Eiffel Tour-the body language of balance. I came across this group of young adults from Sarajevo, Bosnia, having fun testing their balance two nights ago in on the Esplanade de Trocadero. (Photo and comment by Peter Turnley)

Brian Anderson has been taking images of Glasgow for 20 years, spotlighting both the light and dark side of life. Brian, 40, said: “Glasgow is full of character. It’s a nice city, it’s a crazy city and I want to show all that”. Photo: Police look on as a man tries to break up brawling women in Queen Street. (Photo by Brian Anderson)