Andromeda Galaxy: The Neighbour by Yang Hanwen and Zhou Zezhen Photo: Royal Museums Greenwich

Two Chinese teenagers have won the 2022 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition hosted by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in London, with a photo of a stunning galaxy.

The two award-winning 14-year-old boys, Zhou Zezhen, a high-school student from Shaoxing, East China's Zhejiang Province, and Yang Hanwen, a junior high-school student from Xiamen, East China's Fujian Province, met online to watch and record astronomical galaxies.

In October 2021, Yang sent the astronomical camera to an astronomical base in Chuxiong, Southwest China's Yunnan Province, and took hundreds of images remotely via a computer. Zhou then selected and synthesized the entry Andromeda Galaxy and The Neighbour, which finally won the Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year award.

The Andromeda Galaxy is one of our closest and largest neighbors and is on a collision course with the Milky Way, and it can be seen with the naked eye in locations with dark skies. It took a total exposure of 17 hours to capture this image by Yang.

"One of the main functions of astrophotography is to attract more people to learn and love astronomy by showing the beauty of the universe," Zhou said.