Exploration
These amazing photos will make you see stars
The day may be made for play, but night is all right too. Check out these inspiring night-sky images.
Icy Trail
© Maurizio Pignotti
Sometimes, the camera can see more than our eyes – especially when you're doing long exposures in dark places. There's few better ways to see the stars than to let a DSLR camera stay up all night for you! Scroll down for our gallery of amazing night sky images, like the one above – a composition of more than 150 shots and three levels of exposure.
1. Exploding stars
Welcome to hyperspace
© Maurizio Pignotti
Photographer Maurizio Pignotti uses timelapse to create stunning images like the one below, this final frame of a timelapse sequence is entitled 'Hyperspace'.
2. Diamond stars
Count the stars – we dare you
© Maurizio Pignotti
Pignotti swears this image of the Milky Way is directly off of his camera with no re-touching.
3. Strippy stars
Stars leave tracks in the sky
© Maurizio Pignotti
Sixteen different images were combined to the make this eerie image.
4. Colourful stars
Talk about a good rest stop
© Mats Grimsæth / Red Bull Content Pool
6. Golden stars
A great spot for a tent
© Jacob W. Frank- JWFrank.com
Near the San Juan River in Bluff, Utah, is the Big Stick campground, know for rock art, ruins, geology, wildlife – and dark night sky.
7. Circular stars
Find surf and stars in Indonesia
© Elia Locardi
This is the night sky above the extraordinary landscape of Mount Bromo, in Indonesia.
8. Starlight and stones
A rocking view of the night sky
© Maurizio Pignotti
Rocks line the beach in Conero Regional Park in Italy in this single-exposure image.
9. Shooting stars
Is this heavan? Maybe
© Maurizio Pignotti
This shot of snow-covered mountains is a composite of 180 images. Stunning.
10. Revolving stars
Stars above and below
© Maurizio Pignotti
Italy's Lake Pilato sits around 2,000m above sea level – and damn near as close to the stars as you can get.
11. The brightest stars
Watching the Milky Way
© Babak Tafreshi
A stargazer watches the southern view of the Milky Way from the Altiplano, a high plain in northern Chile. The two brightest stars of the Earth night sky, Sirius and Canopus, are on the right.
12. Staring at history
Same sky as 1,000 years ago – almost
© Babak Tafreshi
Greece's Meteora is an amazing sandstone rock formations and pillars that plays host to World Heritage Eastern Orthodox monasteries. Some are approximately one thousand years old. 'Metorea' means 'middle of the sky' or 'in the heavens above' – so pretty apt then to snap it against the night sky...
13. Seeing stars
Sand you'd like to surf
© Stefan Forster
This shot was actually taken quite late at night, as stars move over the Coyote Buttes wave, a sandstone formation near the Arizona-Utah border.