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)

A photograph made available on 30 September 2016 showing wind turbines at the site of the highest wind park in Europe at the Griessee, near the Nufenenpass in the Swiss south Alpes, Valais, Switzerland, on 23 September 2016. The four wind turbines of this wind park were developed by the company SwissWinds GmbH and are inaugurated on, 30 September 2016. (Photo by Olivier Maire/EPA)

A fisherman with a close bond to cormorants uses the flock of birds to catch big fish in Li river in Guilin, China. The aquatic birds can be seen perching on a bamboo raft before swooping into the calm water to grasp hold of prey. (Photo by Julia Wimmerlin/Solnet News & Photo Agency)

On August 31, 2012, a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth's magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. (Photo by NASA/GSFC/SDO via The Atlantic)

View at one of the sculptures by Swiss artist H.R. Giger during the opening of the Ars Electronica 2013 exhibition “HR Giger. The Art of Biomechanics” in Linz, Austria, 04 September 2013. (Photo by EPA/RUBRA)

Relatives of Ukrainian photographer Maksim Levin, killed while covering Russia's attack on Ukraine, react during his funeral in the town of Boiarka, outside of Kyiv, Ukraine on April 4, 2022. (Photo by Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)

Fumie Takino, 89, founder of a senior cheer squad called Japan Pom Pom, and other members pose for commemorative photos before filming a dance routine for an online performance in Tokyo, Japan, April 12, 2021. “It's dancing; moving your body is nice”, Takino said. “And the costumes are unbelievably showy. Some people join just so they can wear them”. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

A U.S. soccer fan pretends that Uruguay's soccer striker Luis Suarez is biting him as he takes a selfie next to an Adidas advertisement featuring Suarez near Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, June 26, 2014. FIFA banned Suarez from all football activities for four months on Thursday for biting an opponent at the World Cup, a punishment that rules him out of the rest of the tournament. (Photo by Matt Dunham/AP Photo)