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Cave with Aurora Skylight

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What looks like a still from Star Wars: Episode 7, in production right night, is actually a successful experiment in patience. Icelandic photographer Ingólfur Bjargmundsson waited all night to capture the aurora light show from inside a cave.


NASA explains:

To capture this fascinating juxtaposition between below and above, astrophotographer Bjargmundsson spent much of a night alone in the kilometer-long Raufarhólshellir lava cave in Iceland during late March. There, he took separate images of three parts of the cave using a strobe for illumination. He also took a deep image of the sky to capture faint aurora, and digitally combined the four images later. The 4600-year old lava tube has several skylights under which stone rubble and snow have accumulated. Oh — the person standing on each mound — it’s the artist.

Image credit: Ingólfur Bjargmundsson

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