Arabic version: جوائز ديفيد مالين تعرض القمر والسدم والشفق القطبي

According to The Guardian, Stefan Buda’s image of the Lunar Apennines was named the overall winner and solar system winner in the 2026 David Malin astrophotography awards. The photograph shows the Montes Apenninus, a rugged mountain range on the northern part of the moon’s near side, captured with a DIY Dall-Kirkham telescope and a ZWO ASI290MM camera.

Andy Campbell won the Deep Sky category with The Rippling Flames – Chamaeleon III, a two-panel mosaic of a nearby star-forming region. The Chamaeleon molecular cloud complex is about 450 to 600 light years from Earth and includes dense dust lanes, faint reflection nebulosity and scattered young stellar populations.

Jarrod Koh’s The Dividing Line won the Wide-Field category, recording the bright nebula M78 alongside the dark nebula LDN 1622 in the Orion molecular cloud complex. M78 is lit primarily by two young B-type stars, whose scattered blue light reveals surrounding dust.

In the Nightscapes category, Brighton Seeley’s Zenith captured an aurora described as a once-in-a-lifetime event. The photographer travelled through bush to a beach while the southern lights appeared overhead, selecting the image from more than 6,000 photographs taken during the display.

Honourable mentions included Ed Hurst’s star-trail view of Pantoneys Crown in NSW; Luke Tscharke’s Tasman Arc, showing aurora australis above Australia’s tallest sea cliffs; and Murray Parkinson’s telescopic image of Comet 2025 R3 PanSTARRS. Parkinson combined 45 one-minute exposures aligned separately on the stars and the comet, then colour calibrated the result using the star field.