The competition, which is run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in association with BBC Sky at Night Magazine, is now in its sixth year and has received over 2,500 entries. Photo: Centre of the Heart Nebula by Ivan Eder (Hungary). Situated 7500 light years away in the “W”-shaped constellation of Cassiopeia, the Heart Nebula is a vast region of glowing gas, energized by a cluster of young stars at its centre. The image depicts the central region, where dust clouds are being eroded and moulded into rugged shapes by the searing cosmic radiation. (Photo by Ivan Eder)

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)

People participate in the Winter Snow Sports Festival in Kalam, about 99 km from Mingora in the northern upper reaches of Swat valley on February 12, 2022. (Photo by Abdul Majeed/AFP Photo)

Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini, in effigy, are about to take a mile-high plunge over Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, Georgia, June 21, 1942, as part of the scrap rubber drive. Private Elias Nour, who arranged the stunt as a farewell party on the eve of his entrance into the army, is on the running board. He guided as the “Axis” plunged to destruction. Spectators had to give a scrap of rubber as the price of admission to the spectacle. (Photo by AP Photo)

A woman poses for a picture as bunches of paprika hang on the walls of her house to dry in the village of Donja Lakosnica, Serbia October 6, 2016. Donja Lokosnica is the Serbian “capital of paprika”, since almost all of the 1300 inhabitants are involved in growing paprika. As autumn approaches, the whole village turns red, because of many threads of dried peppers, that hang around Lokosnica, waiting for their winter use. Each of these paprika threads is handmade, still dried according to traditional techniques, assisted solely by the sun and fresh air. (Photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters)

It's a 30-day-old Echidna baby, known as a “puggle” – one of only 24 ever bred in captivity. The proud parents are Tippy and Pickle of Australia Zoo. The tiny baby, whose s*x has not yet been identified, hatched from a soft egg and will continue to develop and nurse inside Tippy's warm pouch. (Photo by Australia Zoo/Rex/Sipa Press)

In this March 21, 2015 photo, 15-year-old Guerline Augustin carries river water on her head, back to a borderland encampment outside the southeast Haitian town of Anse-a-Pitres, Haiti. The encampment is filled with people who either fled or were forcibly removed from the neighboring Dominican Republic amid an immigration crackdown. Within the next month, authorities hope to move nearly 2,400 people out of six encampments by providing subsidies for them to rent homes for a year in southeastern Haiti. The International Organization for Migration is coordinating the effort with $2 million from a U.N. emergency fund. (Photo by David McFadden/AP Photo)

Villagers use a makeshift bamboo bridge to move across flooded areas of Morigaon district in the northeastern Indian state of Assam August 20, 2014. The latest heavy rains have caused landslides and floods in many parts of India and Nepal, where at least 90 people have been killed since Thursday. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)