This award-winning image of Comet Leonard is not an artist's illustration

"All the effort that went into making this image a success was worth it."

The Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year winners have been announced.

The top spot goes to an image that's so impressive it almost doesn't look real. Austrian photographer Gerald Rhemann captured the image of Comet Leonard and its glowing tail on Christmas Day, 2021, from Namibia, a report from LiveScience reveals.

Rhemann's image provides an ethereal view of the gas cloud surrounding the comet being swept away by solar wind as the space rock was making its way through the central Solar System.

Comet Leonard's ghostly tail

Comet Leonard was only discovered in January last year, only a month before Rhemann captured his picture. The photographer readied his equipment as the comet was making its closest approach to Earth.

"This award is one of the highlights of my astrophotography work," Rhemann explained in a statement. "All the effort that went into making this image a success was worth it."

As it came closer to Earth, charged particles from its tail started to interact with the solar wind, giving it a ghostly glow. Thankfully, Rhemann decided to snap his impressive photograph before Comet Leonard started to travel away from Earth. According to astronomers, the comet's trajectory means it will now travel far into interstellar space and will likely never return to the central solar system.

Other impressive category winners

Other impressive submissions to the contest, and winners of other categories, include an image titled "Andromeda Galaxy: The Neighbor." It is a photograph of the closest galaxy to our own, captured by 14-year-olds Yang Hanwen and Zhou Zezhen of China. They won the Young Photographer category.

Martin Lewis, from the U.K., meanwhile, won the Moon category with an image highlighting shadows falling across a large crater called Plato on the moon's surface.

An image of the Plato crater, the site of the Apollo 11 moon landing, won the Moon category.

Another impressive image comes from American photographer Andrew McCarthy, who won the People and Space entry. His photograph shows the silhouette of the International Space Station (ISS) against the Sea of Tranquility, the site of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Indian photographer Soumyadeep Mukherjee won the Sun category for his image titled "A Year in the Sun," which shows how sunspots, cooler zones on the sun's surface, drift over the course of a year.

The photograph titled 'A Year in the Sun' shows how sunspots move over the course of a year.

The Royal Museums Greenwich's contest website shows a full gallery of all the winners and runners-up. The images are well worth a look. For those who want to see the photographs in person, they are also now on display at the National Maritime Museum in London.