Dentist by day and astrophotographer by night captures breathtaking nightscape images of the sky

The sky is a limitless palette of wonders and we often wish our cameras could capture exactly what our eyes see, but all we get is a hazy vision of traffic lights. However, one European dentist is capturing breathtaking photographs of the galaxy that are nothing short of a delicacy for the eyes.

Nicholas Roemmelt is usually busy examining people sitting on the dentist's chair, but he also takes out time in his evenings to look at stars sitting over the mountains. He grabs his backpack, goes to his backyard and starts walking towards the Alps. Over the past 20 years, he has managed to present some stunning nightscape astrography through his scenic vision. Roemmelt claims that he fell in love with nighttime since it appears to have its own set of rules and a mystical appearance.

This form of photography includes extended exposure durations and requires the photographer's patience, but it's worth the effort, reports My Modern Met. The result is images of the galaxy free of urban light pollution, as well as stunning rock formations with an astounding presence once the sun goes down. His most well-known image is a 2018 combination of the Milky Way with the Perseid meteor shower captured from the Alps' Mount Tschirgant. Roemmelt photographed frame after frame to bring the image to life, but the meteor was not in the majority of them. Fortunately, he persevered and was rewarded with the now-famous photograph, which was awarded NASA's Astronomy Photo of the Day on July 16, 2023.

Roemmelt's impressive portfolio demonstrates that this shot was not a fluke. He always has his camera ready, whether he's ascending a mountain beneath the stars or snuggled into his tent amidst the snow for a good night's sleep.

The image is a composite of several photographs, but the camera is not moved between them, thus it is not a forgery. He added and blended the images for exposure bracketing due to the city's bright lights and a focus stack with the individual in the foreground. He enjoys including a human aspect in his landscapes to give the picture scale and to help people identify with the location. The dentist by day and astrophotographer by night wants the spectators to ponder what it's like to stand on the edge of that cliff in the middle of the night, under a sky full of stars.

When asked how his interest in astrophotography was ignited when he first started capturing such images, he shared with Upworthy, "As I was a kid, I loved laying in the grass or on the beach looking up to the stars in the middle of the night with my dad, who was telling me everything he knew about the stars and the universe. So I would say my love for stars was definitely ignited [during] our short adventures at night."

"My next love was mountaineering, as I was born and raised in a family full of mountaineers and I was hiking and climbing before I could say a whole sentence. Photography, however, was definitely the last 'love' joining on my 30th birthday as my wife had given me a little compact camera as a birthday present. So at the end of the day, Astro (landscape)photography in the mountains was just a logical consequence and as I am a full-time dentist in my own dental office, I only have little spare time and sometimes I just can go taking pictures when everyone is already sleeping."

He added, "Instead of turning into a superhero at night like Batman or so, I decided to rather pack my things and take some pictures of our adventures in the mountains at night and let the stars be our superheroes."