Described as ‘wonders of the cosmos’ and ‘the best space porn of the year’, Astronomy Photographer of the Year is an annual competition and exhibition. It was the Royal Observatory’s first online community for amateur astronomers and set an innovative standard for describing photos of space: astrotagging.
I co-authored a paper for Museums and the Web 2010, Flickr as Platform: Astronomy Photographer of the Year:
This paper will outline how we used the Flickr platform to reach new visitors, build a community of practice, develop an innovative standard for identifying and locating astronomy photographs (‘astrotagging’), shortlist and judge competition entries, develop an on-gallery interactive showcasing all contributed photographs, and repurpose user-generated content for exhibition labels. According to Flickr’s developers, “the integration is so seamless… you might as well consider Flickr to be their ‘backend’ serve.” (Kandalgaonkar, 2009).