Always prepared

Though she now works as a curator in Beijing, she still spends a lot of time traveling overseas taking astrophotos and shooting documentaries about her trips.

In March, she went to the Arctic to capture a geomagnetic storm. In the ensuing months, she traveled to Iceland to film a documentary, Australia to shoot a total solar eclipse, South Africa to take unique photos of the southern night skies, and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region to snap Perseids meteor shower. This month, she traveled to Greece, England and Scotland.

Since 2017, she has been to nearly 30 countries and 100 cities in China and abroad.

"I feel at ease in the wild and under the dark night skies, never lonely or afraid," An said. "I'm always prepared to go out to take photos."

She believes she won the APOY award because she was better prepared than fellow photographers.

Usually, an astrophotographer will use three sets of cameras and lenses to work in the wild — one for photos, one for videos and one for time-lapse work, An said, usually using wide-range lenses.

"But on that day, I prepared a fourth set of cameras using a 135-millimeter lens," she said.

"That's a long-range lens for astrophotography. With a very narrow angle, it's almost impossible to capture sprites flickering in the night sky. But I was lucky. The set worked and managed to capture the red sprites in vivid detail. For the first time, we can view the natural wonder at such a close range through the photo."