A young moon glows over El Hierro Island and deep blue sea in this stunning photo recently sent to Space.com by night sky photographers Erwin Matys and Karoline Mrazek.
El Hierro is one of the Canary Islands located off the northwest coast of Africa. Matys and Mrazek took the image as part of Project Nightflight, an astrophotography project aimed at "capturing the beauty of the night sky."
"On the Canary Islands, the young moon put on a spectacular show last December," Matys wrote Space.com in an email. "After the passage of a cold front the air was so crisp that the slim crescent, the earthshine and the first twilight stars looked almost unnatural." [See more amazing February night sky photos]
The photographers used a 50mm lens @f/4 on an EOS 350D body with an ISO setting of 200 to capture the amazing view of the moon. They made a HDR composite of three different exposures with 1sec, 2sec and 4sec to deal with the very high dynamic range of the scene. The end result retains the details in all parts of the image.
"We were lucky to find the perfect place for imaging this unreal sight on the island La Gomera," Matys wrote.
On their Project Nightflight website, Matys and Mrazek write: "It is not our aim to produce images of scientific value. Much more we intend to present the hypnotic power and magic of the universe."
To see more amazing night sky photos submitted by SPACE.com readers, visit our astrophotography archive.
Editor's note: If you have an amazing night sky photo you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.
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