How impressive is this gorgeous star trail photographed from the International Space Station?!

Here are some more star trails for your viewing pleasure – don’t forget to click to view larger versions…

Expedition 31 Flight Engineer Don Pettit relayed some information about the photographic techniques he used to achieve the images:

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.

via hovercraftdoggy

Pretty amazing photographs, don’t you think? You can view lots more here.

Have you ever experimented with long exposure star trail photography? How were the results? Do share!

Related post: 6 steps to out of this world night sky images (from terra firma!)