These 8 Stunning Night Sky Images Won South Downs National Park's Cosmic Photography Competition
Every year, during February, the grassy grounds of Southern England’s South Downs National Park turn into a stage for performances so dazzling that they remind witnesses again and again to "embrace the darkness." Walks along the trails are lit up like necklaces of twinkling diamonds. Bathed in moonbeams, the lichen-covered trees host parties of bioluminescent fungi and nocturnal creatures that glow. Visitors' faces are illumined by sparkles of exuberance as they enjoy star parties, podcasts, and cosmic storytelling sessions. In the sky above, constellations like the Great Bear materialize to mark this Dark Skies Festival.
Imitating the cosmic messages exhibited by these sights, the winners of the South Downs National Park cosmic competition captured celestial wonders across their towns, also marking the 10th anniversary of South Downs National Park being one of the 25 International Dark Sky Reserves in the world. More than 130 breathtaking images were submitted, from glowing clouds of gas to surreal halos of galaxies. The winning photograph captured a tongue of the Milky Way rising from behind an abandoned hut in a barn in Brighton’s Balsdean Valley. The winning photographer, Michael Steven Harris, bagged the prize of £250 ($339).
1. Overall Winner
Titled “Ancient Light,” Harris’ photography didn’t just capture the brown-purple streak of the Milky Way or the glow split by clusters of stars. As he told the award organizers, the site is also a journey back in time to a place when Romans roamed the land, and soldiers sought accommodation in a medieval hamlet. All these stories came and went in the time the light of the Milky Way took to reach us, approximately 26,000 years. “I think this is an incredible and realistic photo of what the South Downs Dark Skies experience is. It’s beautifully framed,” remarked Dan Oakley, a Dark Skies expert and one of the competition’s judges.
2. 'Life at Night' Category Winner
This photograph registers the memory of the perfect moment that unfolded while Richard Murray was walking down a trail in the South Downs one night. His eyes fell upon a slimy, mucous-laced snail trotting down a stone wall. He waited for the right moment when the creature lifted its antennae, and they aligned with the seven stars of the Great Bear constellation above. The result was this masterpiece, “Snail Trail to the Stars.” The angle and perspective of the lens dimmed the stars, so they hung in the background as soft, blooming disks.
3. 'Life at Night' Category Runner-up
The silhouette of a lone tree stands dramatically in the foreground as a pinkish-red full moon rises behind. Ian Brierley couldn’t miss this moment at Cissbury Ring, especially when four horses came leaping into the scene and painted their silhouettes against the moon-tree dance. "Four Horses of the Apocalypse," Brierley titled the shot.
4. 'South Downs Dark Skyscapes' Category Winner
Looming from a ravaged piece of land near South Downs’ chalky cliffs, an old ruin in Eastbourne captivated the heart of Lorcan Taylor, who stopped by there to snap a photo he later named “A Window to Our Galaxy.” From the broken, crumbly walls of a monument someone once built, the ancient light of the cosmos filters through an open, square-shaped crack. Up above, the sky explodes into a melody of stars glittering on a canvas of midnight blue, showcasing that even in ruin, there’s still wonder overhead.
5. 'South Downs Dark Skyscapes' Category Runner-up
In the heart of England, the towering spires of the 11th-century-built Arundel Castle got perfectly aligned with the partial lunar eclipse, and Carl Gough happened to be lucky as he captured the rare sight in a photo called “Eclipsed.” Perched above the Arun River, the Gothic spires of the castle seem to be bathed in the yellowish light drizzled by the crescent-shaped piece of the glowing Moon.
6. 'Meteoric Mobile Phone' Category Winner
Mandy Turner had to pull out her phone when she noticed the dark skies of the South Downs staring back at her with a radiant, luminous face. The halo enveloped the Moon in a circle while a ribbon of ice crystals dangled in the middle. "Moon Halo," Turner’s winning photograph, depicts the Moon as a tiny glowing pearl sewn into this circular halo.
7. 'South Downs to Deep Space' Category Winner
“It looks straight out of Star Trek." This was the first thought of Dan when he saw Nigel Stanbury’s photo, “Jellyfish Nebula.” In an almost sci-fi style, the photo vividly captures a nebula glowing in fiery orange, candy purple, and electric blue, highlighted by the stark velvety black darkness of the sky. It resembles a jellyfish, but it is actually the remains of a supernova located 5,000 light-years away.
8. 'South Downs to Deep Space' Category Runner-up
Tom Elphick couldn’t be more excited when he got the fabulous opportunity to capture a striking alignment offered by the stars of the Orion constellation one night in winter. In an image he called “Winter View Orion,” he arrested this starry performance, peppered with splashes of glowing, glassy colors, in the inky black skies of Ditchling Beacon, the highest point in East Sussex.
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