Click to Enlarge to see its real beauty

This has to be the most awesome time-lapse photo ever taken in my opinion, mainly because it was taken from the International Space Station by Flight Engineer, Don Pettit as it orbited the Earth…here’s what he had to say on the subject:

“My star trail images are made by taking a time exposure of about 10 to 15 minutes. However, with modern digital cameras, 30 seconds is about the longest exposure possible, due to electronic detector noise effectively snowing out the image. To achieve the longer exposures I do what many amateur astronomers do. I take multiple 30-second exposures, then ‘stack’ them using imaging software, thus producing the longer exposure.”

More of these stunning images are available on the official NASA Flicker page.