Time-lapse videos of the night sky never cease to amaze me, but this one just blew my mind. Turn up the volume, set to HD, and marvel at seven days of sky on Teide:

The video was made by Norwegian landscape photographer Terje Sørgjerd in 2011 at Tiede National Park in the Canary Islands. Tiede is home to the Teide Observatory which makes an appearance in the video.

One really amazing feature in the video occurs at about 0:32 seconds where the Milky Way is seen rising above a foreground of orange clouds. Those “clouds” are actually sand from a sandstorm that hit the Sahara desert a couple of days earlier. The whole scene looks like it was taken from another planet and is just jaw-dropping.

As I watch the video, I cannot help but consider that as crowded as the sky is with stars, each of those stars are light-years away from one another; each as alone in the void as we are. And yet seen like this, they appear stacked on top of one another, creating the illusion of a crowded galaxy.

Space is big, and insanely beautiful at the same time. My thanks to Natalie Batalha  for spotting this.