Astrophotographer Grabs a Snapshot of the Darkest Possible Sky
The Darkest Sky Stéphane Guisard If you're going to photograph the cosmos, the first step is to find somewhere really dark where Earthly light pollution won't spoil your shot. Following this line of thought to its logical limits, astrophotographer Stéphane Guisard went in search of the darkest possible sky he could find here on Earth, and found it at just the right time and place in Chile's Atacama Desert. The results are these breathtaking shots that on first glance may look noisy and polluted -- until you take a good close-up look at what's really there. The images above and below were taken during a new moon, meaning there is no moonlight to mute the incoming light from elsewhere in the universe. Moreover, Guisard took the shot at such a time of year that the Milky Way, usually seen as a band of light across the night sky,...