GALAXIES & OVERALL WINNER ‘Unexpected’ Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner and Yann Sainty
“The Andromeda galaxy is the closest spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way and one of the most photographed deep-sky objects,” the judges note. “Yet this particular photo, captured by an international trio of amateur astronomers – Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner and Yann Sainty – revealed a feature that had never been seen before: a huge plasma arc, stretching out across space right next to the Andromeda galaxy.”
WINNER: OUR MOON ‘Mars-set’ Ethan Chappel
“The occultation of Mars by the Moon was one of the last and greatest celestial events of 2022 and it was also