Winners of Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2013 revealed

Winner and Overall Winner - Guiding Light to the Stars © Mark Gee (Australia): The skies of the Southern Hemisphere offer a rich variety of astronomical highlights. The central regions of the Milky Way Galaxy, 26,000 light years away, appear as a tangle of dust and stars in the central part of the image. Two even more distant objects are visible as smudges of light in the upper left of the picture. These are the Magellanic Clouds, two small satellite galaxies in orbit around the Milky Way. (© Mark Gee)

Australian photographer Mark Gee has beaten thousands of people across the world to be crowned Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2013.

His startling shot of the Milky Way with a beam from a lighthouse was commended by judges for its depth and clarity.

There were several other categories including 'Earth and Space', 'Deep Space' and 'Our Solar System', among others.

The competition once again received a record number of entries with a huge range of subjects captured by amateur and professional photographers from around the globe.

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