The competition is run by Royal Observatory Greenwich sponsored by Insight Investment and in association with BBC Sky at Night Magazine. This year astrophotographers from 91 countries sent in more than 4,200 spectacular entries. Here: The Milky Way rises above an isolated lighthouse in Tasmania. Shot by James Stone of Australia. (Photo by James Stone/Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2018)

A bird swoops in to deliver its food to its chick, ramming it deep into its mouth while in flight. The photos of the swallows were captured by Kelvin Leong in Hampstead Wetlands Park, Singapore in July 2023. (Photo by Kelvin Leong/Solent News & Photo Agency)

A seal infront of a passing cruise ship on the shore between Sandhaven village and Fraserburgh in Scotland in August 2023. (Photo by Mark Grant/Caters News Agency)

American rapper Kanye West, American singer and songwriter Ty Dolla $ign, Australian architect and model Bianca Censori and her mother Alexandra Censori arrive back in Los Angeles, CA on a privet Jet on March 13, 2024. (Photo by Backgrid USA)

A female jaguar named Ti, by the NGO Jaguar ID, bites an alligator at Encontro das Aguas State Park, in the Pantanal, the largest wetland in the world, in Pocone, Mato Grosso, Brazil, on October 10, 2024. (Photo by Sergio Moraes/Reuters)

Members of the Australian Jewish community participate in a gathering called ‘Balloons of Hope’, which represents Israeli hostages who are currently being held by the Palestinian group Hamas, in Sydney on October 27, 2023. Thousands of civilians, both Palestinians and Israelis, have died since October 7, 2023, after Palestinian Hamas militants based in the Gaza Strip entered southern Israel in an unprecedented attack triggering a war declared by Israel on Hamas with retaliatory bombings on Gaza. (Photo by David Gray/AFP Photo)

The hare was actually yawning and stretching but, looking back at the photos, it does look like it was laughing — probably at my husband and I as we had been sat there in the freezing conditions for about five hours just waiting for this kind of behaviour in Cairngorms, Scotland in the last decade of February 2025. (Photo by Michelle Coyle/Solent News & Photo Agency)

A woman crosses the street on a foggy morning in Frankfurt, Germany, Friday, October 29, 2021. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)