Mount Sinabung looks calm as seen from Karo, North Sumatra at dawn on August 8, 2021. (Photo by Tibta Nangin/AFP Photo)

A crowd of people gathered at the seaside of Udaipur, Digha, India before a cloud burst of rain on May 21, 2022. India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted that the Monsoon rain will likely arrive a week early this year due to twin cyclones, Asani and Karim. (Photo by Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Undated handout photo issued by Take a View of the winner of the Adobe Prize of the Landscape Photographer of the Year Awards, The Daymark, Brixham, Devon, England by Will Milner (lives Oxfordshire). Issue date: Monday October 15, 2018. (Photo by Will Milner/PA Wire Press Association)

Founded in 1989, the Icehotel in Swedish Lapland is built from the snow up each year, using ice from the local river. The rooms are designed by international artists and this year feature spacemen and an ice queen. The hotel has 35 suites, featuring ice carvings designed by 36 different artists from 17 countries. (Photo by Asaf Kliger/IceHotel/The Guardian)

This composite image shows a sequence, from bottom left to top left, of the moon's transition during a total lunar eclipse on April 15, 2014 in Miami, Florida. People in most of north and south America should be able to witness this year's first total lunar eclipse, which will cause a “blood moon” and is the first of four in a rare Tetrad of eclipses over the next two years. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

A person looks up at the Aurora Australis in Judbury in the Huon Valley, Tasmania on April 24, 2023. (Photo by Toby Schrapel freelance photography/The Guardian)

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.

M42 Subtle V1 cropped. One of the most well-known astronomical objects in our universe is the Orion Nebula and this image depicts the wider region of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex that is its home. This complex also includes another popular target for astrophotographers, the Horsehead Nebula, as well as Barnard’s Loop and the Running Man Nebula, which can be seen to the left of this photograph. (Photo by Patrick Gilliland)