Once again, the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, is holding its Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, which also includes a category for under-16s. The Public Astronomer, Dr Marek Kukula, gave us some tips for the budding astro-photographers among you.

Why should people enter?

Astronomy is something that fascinates everybody of all ages, but particularly kids. It’s about the universe and where we come from. This is the third year that we’ve been running the competition, and when we first ran it, we really didn’t know what kind of quality we’d get. But we’ve had entries from all over the world and some really beautiful pictures of objects in the night sky, and some lovely pictures of landscapes on Earth with the night sky as backdrops. But as a judge, the thing that has really made an impression on me was the young photographer’s category. We’ve really been blown away by the quality of the images and just the sheer beauty of them.

Do you judge the Young Astronomer category differently to the adult one?

No, we don’t give them any special treatment, because the quality in the young people’s category has been so high. Obviously these young entrants don’t have decades of experience of taking pictures, but they more than make up for that with their imagination and enthusiasm.

What kind of kit would someone need to get a decent photo?

When they hear about an astronomy photo competition, a lot of people get a bit nervous. They think: “Oh gosh, I’ve got to have specialist cameras and I’m going to need a telescope.” And sure, to take some of the tricky pictures of very faint and distant galaxies in the night sky, you do need to invest a bit in some decent kit. But a lot of the entrants are just using a normal digital camera, taking pictures of earthly landscapes, but with the night sky or moon as the background. You don’t even need a telescope to take a really good astronomy photograph.

What else could they take pictures of?

One of the winning photos in the young astronomer category last year was taken by a Canadian schoolboy who was driving down the highway with his mother when he saw an amazing effect called a solar halo, where sunlight shines off ice crystals high in the atmosphere. He made his mum pull over, grabbed her digital camera from her handbag and took a shot out of the car window. It was a beautiful picture and the runner-up image. It’s not all about expensive equipment, it’s about spotting a beautiful picture in the sky, snapping it and submitting it to the competition.

For readers who live in big cities, is it still possible to get good pictures?

It is. Light pollution is a problem in the cities, and there are things in the night sky, like the Milky Way and faint galaxies, that you will never see from a city. Here in Greenwich we have quite a bad light pollution problem from London, but we still see lots of interesting things. At the moment, Jupiter is a very bright object in the night sky, which you can see even from central London. It’s the brightest thing in the night sky at the moment, apart from the moon. Even with a small pair of binoculars or a decent little telescope you’ll be able to see its four largest moons.

Do you think there are aliens out there?

Over the last 15 years, for the first time ever in history, we’ve started to find planets that orbit around stars other than the sun. We haven’t found any planets that are quite like the Earth yet, but I think in the next three to five years we will. So I think the chances of there being some kind of alien life out there are getting higher all the time.