A ghostly supernova remnant in Cepheus takes top honors among more than 1,400 entries.
Dark nebulae loom over glowing filaments of supernova remnant SNR G110.3+11.3. The image won the grand prize in Astronomy’s 2026 Astrophotography Contest. Credit: Julien De Winter; Landon Boehm; Brian Diaz
Astronomy magazine is proud to announce the winners of its 2026 Astrophotography Contest, presented by Celestron — the magazine’s first photo contest in 13 years.
More than 1,400 entries poured in from photographers around the world, with images ranging from faint nebulae and stunning planetary close-ups to dramatic solar images and beautiful nightscapes. As astroimaging has grown more advanced since our last photo contest, it has also become more accessible, and this year we strove to open the contest to as many imagers as possible. The Smartscopes category let imagers using all-in-one devices compete on a level playing field. Our Newcomer category was open to photographers ages 13 to 17 or anyone with fewer than two years of experience. And in the Processing category, you didn’t need imaging gear at all: every entrant worked from the same free Telescope Live dataset.
The magazine’s editors chose the grand prize winner, eight category winners, and 22 runners-up with a panel of guest judges: Contributing Editors Tony Hallas, Molly Wakeling, and Michael Bakich; planetary imager Damian Peach; and Editor Emeritus Dave Eicher.
See every winner and runner-up in our winners gallery.
Grand Prize: “The Dementors of Cepheus,” by Julien De Winter, Landon Boehm, and Brian Diaz
A pair of shadowy, wraithlike figures weave their way through a grand tapestry of stellar life and death in our grand-prize-winning image. The imagers refer to them as the “Dementors of Cepheus” — a reference to the wardens of the prison Azkaban in the Harry Potter series. Here, they guard not convicts, but a corpse: The filaments of gas in the center of the frame are the remnants of a supernova, cataloged as SNR G110.3+11.3, that blew apart a massive star.
Judges called this image “sensational” and “impressive.” Astronomy Contributing Editor Molly Wakeling praised its composition and also its sense of depth — one of the things she looks for in a good astrophotograph. “If you can get that 3D feel to it, that’s when you know you’ve made it.”
The team wins a Celestron RASA 8 astrograph.
Category winners
- Deep Sky — Broadband: Prasaad Milner, the Blue Horsehead Nebula and Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex
- Deep Sky — Narrowband: Emmanuel Joly, the Sharpless 2-115 complex in Cygnus
- Solar System Objects: Simon Labergère, Saturn with Titan and Tethys
- Solar Imaging: Mehmet Ergün, the active Sun in hydrogen-alpha
- Nightscapes: Tom Rae, the Milky Way over Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park, New Zealand
- Smartscopes: Nathanael Martin, the Angel Nebula (NGC 2170)
- Processing: Marius Dinga, RCW 38
- Newcomer: Andy Garrett, the Rosette Nebula
The December 2026 issue of Astronomy has full captions for each winning image, along with profiles of the photographers. Subscribe so you don’t miss it.
Congratulations to all our winners, and thank you to everyone who submitted an image to the contest.
Presenting Sponsor
Associate Sponsor
Category Sponsors