Young gorillas monkey around with zoo visitors, sticking their tongues out and pressing their faces against the glass, February 2025. Mobi, 1, and Gaia, 10 months, are half sisters and often push each other away at the glass to get the attention of their observers at the Prague Zoo. (Photo by Lucie Stepnickova/Solent News & Photo Agency)

A pair of otters share a soft kiss over seaweed on the Isle of Mull, Scotland in the first decade of October 2025. (Photo by David Akers/Solent News & Photo Agency)

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)

Maja, a 40-year-old elephant, extends her trunk into a bakery as a customer buys a newspaper while Maja took a stroll through the neighborhood with her minders from a nearby circus on July 1, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

English model Cara Delevingne attends The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” exhibition on Monday, May 2, 2022, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP Photo)

A Soyuz rocket booster carrying the Progress MS-17 cargo freighter blasts off the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kyzylorda Region, Kazakhstan on June 30, 2021. (Photo by Roscosmos Press Office/TASS)

Former Mujahideen hold weapons to support Afghan forces in their fight against Taliban, on the outskirts of Herat province, Afghanistan on July 10, 2021. (Photo by Jalil Ahmad/Reuters)

Ice Age – Tibet, China. “This is the Chinese version of the blue ice lake, Pumoungcuo, at an altitude of 5,070 metres (16,600 feet). This lake in Tibet freezes every winter. At night, under the low temperatures of -20C, you can listen to the sound of the ice cracking while capturing the most beautiful winter sky. The blue ice surface and dazzling Orion constellation create a fantasy landscape. I felt so happy to have the stars as my companion on this magical night”. (Photo by Daniel Zafra Portill/Milky Way Photographer of the Year)