From the artist:

"This was filmed between 4th and 11th April 2011. I had the pleasure of visiting El Teide. Spain’s highest mountain (@3715m) is one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars and is also the location of Teide Observatories, considered to be one of the world’s best observatories.

The goal was to capture the beautiful Milky Way galaxy along with one of the most amazing mountains I know El Teide. I have to say this was one of the most exhausting trips I have done. There was a lot of hiking at high altitudes and probably less than 10 hours of sleep in total for the whole week. Having been here 10-11 times before I had a long list of must-see locations I wanted to capture for this movie, but I am still not 100% used to carrying around so much gear required for time-lapse movies.

A large sandstorm hit the Sahara Desert on the 9th April (bit.ly/​g3tsDW) and at approx 3am in the night the sandstorm hit me, making it nearly impossible to see the sky with my own eyes.

Interestingly enough my camera was set for a 5 hour sequence of the milky way during this time and I was sure my whole scene was ruined. To my surprise, my camera had managed to capture the sandstorm which was backlit by Grand Canary Island making it look like golden clouds. The Milky Way was shining through the clouds, making the stars sparkle in an interesting way. So if you ever wondered how the Milky Way would look through a Sahara sandstorm, look at 00:32."

— Terje Sorgjerd

*promote

Music by Ludovico Einaudi makes it twice as awesome.

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Friday, April 15th, 2011 6:43pm PDT - promote requested by RedSky.

0:45 - 0:53 blew me away... coulds acting like waves...

Anyway... how did he photograph stars during the day, or do filters do that for you? I know nothing of photography beyond pressing the middle button on my blackberry...

Wow. Thank you for this reminder to turn my computer off and spend my Saturday outside!

*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by gwiz665.

>> ^Payback:
0:45 - 0:53 blew me away... coulds acting like waves...
Anyway... how did he photograph stars during the day, or do filters do that for you? I know nothing of photography beyond pressing the middle button on my blackberry...
Pretty sure that was actually footage from night and the bright light source was the moon. The other daytime shots didn't have any stars in them.


I have access to a mile-long lake in the middle of the Canadian forest and the nearest habitation is over the horizon so there's very little light pollution. A friend and I went in once in the middle of our winter, and with the incredible northern constellations like Orion on full display, the stars are almost that bright. I'd love to see what some timelapse exposures would look like in there.

The timelapses are amazing but i dont think they are beautiful at all.

The truth is that a lot of videos on vimeo very often seem to be color corrected to death and tend to look like kitsch. Too sweet for me and the music just adds to it..

Some of the shots were superimposed, sometimes upto 3 different images I believe, but very seamlessly. I especially liked shots shown at 1:52 to 2:10 where background remains still while foreground is in constant motion.

Terje Sorgjerd is a master of out-of-this-world timelapse videos. After stunning all of us with one featuring the northern lights earlier this year, he’s back again with an even crazier one that captures the Milky Way over El Teide, Spain’s highest mountain. The individual frames were shot using a Canon 5D Mark II with a Canon 17mm TSE, Canon 16-35mm II, Canon 24/1.4II, and Sigma 12-24mm.

Damn nature, you beautiful.