National Geographic has put together a spectacular showcase of astronomy photographs for 2018 and some of the best include an otherworldly landscape in Utah where a lone photographer stands silhouetted against a night sky revealing the Andromeda galaxy, the Milky way galaxy, and the moon, to an amazing blazing detail of the sun, "an eruptive prominence on the surface of the sun."

These images showcase the beauty and mystery of the universe.

Check out the unlit street lamps and a spectacular view of the stars above the coastal village of Pagham in West Sussex, England.

An ultra-bright moon is no match for the aurora borealis glowing above a fjord in northern Norway’s Lofoten archipelago.

This shot is made up of 20 separate pictures, this image shows the Milky Way galaxy against a field of radio telescopes in Ming’antu, China

Look here for rarely seen details of the moon's surface.

Mist blankets a village in northern Hungary as the Gamma Andromedae star system—appearing as a wispy line thanks to a long exposure—hovers above in the sky.

The open star cluster NGC 6939 and the galaxy NGC 6949 meets a supernova stellar explosion in this shot.

Venus appears as a graceful, arcing sliver in this infrared image taken with a digital video camera just before sunset.

A portrait of the Lambda Centauri Nebula.

A meteor passes over Italy on an early autumn morning and various nebulae and other objects appear in this long-exposure photograph of the Corona Australis constellation, taken in Namibia.

Truly spectacular and full of wonder.

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