Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2013

Each year, the prestigious international photo-competition "Astronomy Photographer of The Year" is arranged by the Royal Observatory Greenwich, UK and yesterday the winners of 2013 were announced during an award ceremony in London.

The competition is divided into three main categories, "Earth and Space", "Our Solar System" and "Deep Sky", where astro-photographers around the world compete about the title for the world’s best astronomy photo. Detailed information about the competition can be found here.

This year, more than 1200 high-quality entries from all around the world entered the competition and I was therefore very happy and honored to receive both 2^nd and 3^rd place in the category “Earth and Space of the competition for my images “Green Energy” and “Icy Visitor”. The first place and overall winner of the competition was Mark Gee from Australia who was awarded first place for his spectacular photo “Guiding Light to the Stars” from New Zealand – congratulations Mark – you are a very worth winner!

All winning images can be seen at the recent media coverage of the photo-competition by NRK here

 

“Green Energy”

"Icy Visitor"

Out of the 24 finalists, three photographers also got a visit by a film-team from London that travelled to the places where some of the winning images were captured to understand the story behind the photos. I was one of the lucky photographers to receive a visit, and together with the film-crew we returned to the spot where I took my photos and yesterday Royal Observatory Greenwich released a short-film on Vimeo telling the tale behind the awarded images (in English): Fredrik: Sharing the magic of the northern sky