Photographers Weitang Liang, Qi Yang and Chuhong Yu have beaten thousands of amateur and professional photographers from around the world to bag the 2025 Royal Observatory Greenwich’s ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year 17.
The image – The Andromeda Core – showcases the core of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) in exceptional detail, revealing the intricate structure of the galaxy’s central region and its surrounding stellar population.
The image was taken with a long focal-length telescope from the AstroCamp Observatory, Nerpio, Spain.
“Not to show it all − this is one of the greatest virtues of this photo. The Andromeda Galaxy has been photographed in so many different ways and so many times with telescopes that it is hard to imagine a new photo would ever add to what we’ve already seen,” notes astrophotographer László Francsics who was a judge for this year’s competition. “But this does just that, an unusual dynamic composition with unprecedented detail that doesn’t obscure the overall scene.”
As well as winning the £10,000 top prize, the image has gone on display along with other selected pictures from the competition at an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum observatory that opened on 12 September.
The award – now in its 17th year – is run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in association with the astrophotography firm ZWO and BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
