General Guidelines

The Space Photo Club is designed to be a positive, inclusive community for sharing astrophotography and space-themed images. All submissions must be appropriate for an educational environment and should focus on astronomical subjects, space exploration, or related science themes. You may submit original photographs taken with a phone, DSLR, telescope, or other camera, as well as images created using publicly available telescope data, as long as you credit the source in the description. Images must be submitted in JPG, PNG, or WebP formats and should not exceed 1MB in file size so they can be hosted reliably on the student web server.

By submitting a photo, you agree that it may be displayed on the club website, used in the voting page, and archived in the gallery of past winners. Submissions that contain offensive, copyrighted, or unrelated content will be removed and may be disqualified from future contests. Light editing such as cropping, color balance, and noise reduction is allowed; however, heavily manipulated or AI-generated images should be clearly labeled so viewers understand how the image was produced. Be respectful when commenting on other members’ work and focus on constructive feedback that helps everyone improve.

File Formats, Sizes, and Deadlines

To keep the site organized and easy to maintain, the Space Photo Club only accepts image files with a “.jpg”, “.jpeg”, “.png”, or “.webp” extension. Each file must be under 1MB in size; larger images may be automatically removed from the web server, which will prevent them from appearing in the voting page or gallery. When you submit a photo, please name the file using the format lastname_category_shorttitle.jpg (for example: caza_deepspace_orionnebula.jpg). This naming convention helps keep the images organized by photographer and category.

Each contest cycle includes a submission period followed by a voting period. Photos submitted after the posted deadline will be considered for the next round of voting. You may submit one photo per category per contest cycle, for a total of three photos. If multiple submissions are received for the same category, only the most recent one may be used for voting. In the event of a tie, the club coordinator may feature more than one winning image in the gallery. Please review the categories page for detailed descriptions of each category before choosing where your image belongs.