Some of the best entries so far in the 2016 Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. There are two weeks left to enter, and the winners will be announced in September. Here: Aurora over Laksvatn Fjord, Laksvatn, Norway. The aurora borealis dances in the skies over the town of Laksvatn, with the Milky Way to the left. The image is a single shot with no compositing, only post-processing to bring out the aurora, and some colour corrections. The photographer Matt Walford said: “I love the way the northern lights look like they are just wistfully dancing over the fjord, framed by the mountains on either side”. (Photo by Matt Walford/National Maritime Museum)

A worker, dressed in a protective suit, cleans Conchitas Beach contaminated by an oil spill, in Ancon, Peru, Thursday, January 20, 2022. The oil spill on the Peruvian coast was caused by the waves from an eruption of an undersea volcano in the South Pacific nation of Tonga. (Photo by Martin Mejia/AP Photo)

A fashion lovers walks in the courtyard of the Louvre museum during Louis Vuitton ready-to-wear Spring/Summer 2023 fashion collection presented Tuesday, October 4, 2022 in Paris. (Photo by Christophe Ena/AP Photo)

Students perform a traditional dance during the Onam festival celebrations in Chennai on August 25, 2023. (Photo by R. Satish Babu/AFP Photo)

A person dressed as the Statue of Liberty pays for a hot dog on a side street near the 51st Annual Village Halloween Parade in New York, New York, USA, 31 October 2024. The annual holiday parade passes through the city's Greenwich Village neighborhood and claims to be the largest Halloween parade in the world. (Photo by Justin Lane/EPA/EFE)

A partial Solar eclipse is seen just after sunrise over the Queens borough of New York across the East River on November 3, 2013 in New York. (Photo by Stan Honda/AFP Photo)

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.

Marani Devi Chaudhary (C), aged 40, performs a ritual in front of shaman Paltan Yadav (unseen) at her home in Rajaur village in Dhanusha district, Nepal, 02 November 2017. The shaman identified Marani Devi to be possessed by their lineage god who was dissatisfied by their worship is thought by the family to have caused them misfortune and is even feared lead to their death. (Photo by Narendra Shrestha/EPA/EFE)