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A composite of six images as vertical stripes. The starry sky on the right-most image is gradually drowned out moving left

Real Light Pollution Panorama, by Tomáš Slovinský, Slovakia

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Created for the OAE

Caption: Second place in the 2021 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Light pollution. This composite image taken in Slovakia in 2020 illustrates the effect due to artificial illumination of light polluted areas. The higher the level of light pollution, the less we can observe in the sky, notice how the number of stars visible even to a sensitive digital camera decreases from right to left. Light pollution not only affects the visibility of objects in the night sky, but also significantly impacts ecosystems, negatively affecting many animals, such as migratory night birds, which may encounter difficulties to find the direction to where they should migrate to, or the sea turtles, which may be confused by the lights from coastal cities located near the beaches where they are supposed to spawn. Light pollution can also negatively impact some human health. Therefore, it is important to preserve the dark and quiet night sky for the benefit of the entire planet and all the diverse life it supports.
Credit: Tomáš Slovinský/IAU OAE

Glossary Terms: Light Pollution
Categories: Naked Eye Astronomy

License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons

This file on Zenodo ( image 7.60 MB)


The Hubble Ultra Deep Field showing around 10,000 galaxies of various ages, sizes, shapes and colours.

Hubble Ultra Deep Field

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Caption: This awe-inspiring image referred to as the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF), was obtained using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), by combining 800 exposures from 400 orbits of the HST, which equates to 11.3 days of total exposure time. The image shows nearly 10,000 galaxies and was taken in the direction of a patch of sky with the least amount of stars from the Milky Way galaxy in the field of view. The region of sky that the HST observed corresponds to 1/10 the angular size of the Full Moon, which is roughly equal to approximately a 1 millimeter-sized object placed 1 meter away. Every object in the image, except for the bright points with the crosshairs, are galaxies. As a consequence of the speed of light being a constant in a vacuum, the more distant an object, the further back in time we are observing. Therefore, the light from some of the galaxies in the HUDF image is from when the Universe as only a few hundred million years old. The HUDF image takes us through on a journey through space, and also in time.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team
Credit Link

Glossary Terms: Cosmology , Cosmos , Galaxy , Universe
Categories: Cosmology

License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons

File ( image 8.97 MB)


This Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation map is an oval with many patches of different colors as well as finer granulation

Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

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Caption: This image is a representation of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Radiation created using data from the Planck satellite. The CMB is the glow left over from when the Universe was approximately 380,000 years old. The early Universe was hot and dense, so the photons from that era were high energy. Due to the expansion of the Universe over 13.8 billion years photons of ""light"" from the early Universe have been stretched to longer wavelengths and are detectable in millimetre wavelengths (microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum). The ""mottled"" pattern in the image is referred to as anisotropies, and it represents very small temperature fluctuations. These fluctuations correspond to regions of slightly different densities, and are essentially the seeds for larger structure in the Universe e.g.: galaxies, galaxy clusters, and the very first stars. The data from the CMB allows various characteristics of the Universe to be derived, for example, composition, shape, age, and allows for certain predictions to be made about the future evolution of the Universe. The shape of the image is the result of a mapping projection, where the entire sky is mapped onto a single flat oval shape called Molleweide projection. The center of the Milky Way galaxy is located at the centre of the image.
Credit: ESA/Planck Collaboration
Credit Link

Glossary Terms: Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) , Cosmology
Categories: Cosmology

License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) icons

File ( image 14.05 MB)


The arc of the Milky Way over some trees. Two small galaxies can be seen in the lower middle of the image.

Milky Way Over Quiver Tree

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Created for the OAE

Caption: Winner in the 2023 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category of Still images taken exclusively with smartphones/mobile devices. This breathtaking photograph was captured on 17 June 2023, near Keetmanshoop, Namibia, with a smartphone. Dominating the night sky, the majestic arc of the Milky Way creates a celestial bridge across the heavens. The image captures a range of notable astronomical objects: the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, seen towards the bottom of the image and appearing as fuzzy clouds; Antares, seen towards the top left of the image; and the coalsack nebula (referred to by various names by Indigenous cultures around the world), seen vertically above the Large Magellanic Cloud. Silhouetted against this astral backdrop, the trees — which are actually succulent aloe plants native to southern Africa — add a touch of Earth's unique beauty. Historically, these plants were known as ‘quiver trees’ because groups of local Indigenous people would use their hollowed branches to hold darts. The serene Namibian landscape, combined with the brilliance of the southern hemisphere's stars, offers a glimpse into the majesty of our Universe.
Credit: Jianfeng Dai/IAU OAE (CC BY 4.0)

Glossary Terms: Milky Way , Sky , Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) , Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC)
Categories: Milky Way and Interstellar Medium , Naked Eye Astronomy
Tags: astrophotography

License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons

This file on Zenodo ( image 22.04 MB)


Two bright arcs of material, two halves of a broken loop, project outwards from a section of the Sun.

A Coronal Mass Ejection

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Caption: A burst of solar material can be seen erupting from the Sun in this view, illustrating a coronal mass ejection (CME)—a large eruption of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona. These CMEs are caused by magnetic explosions in the Sun's corona. During a CME, huge amounts of electrically charged particles are launched into space at great speeds, carrying part of the Sun’s magnetic field with them. These events are driven by changes in the Sun’s magnetic structure and release vast clouds of hot gas that travel outward into the solar system. When a CME moves through space, it can interact with a planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere, sometimes creating spectacular auroras or, in strong cases, interfering with artificial satellites and power systems. CMEs are often associated with a temporary brightening of the region of the Sun where the CME originated. This is known as a solar flare. Stars other than the Sun can also have CMEs and flares. This image was taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). This is a space mission to monitor the Sun. The image here is taken at a special wavelength which partially ionised helium emits strongly at.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SDO
Credit Link

Glossary Terms: Sun , Coronal Mass Ejection (CME)

License: Public Domain Public Domain icons

File ( image 596.22 kB)


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