A Starry World
All photos in this story are by or courtesy to Babak Tafreshi.
I woke up groggily, crawled out of the sleeping bag, and reached out a hand to unzip the tent flap. Our tent was set up in a cozy campsite on part of the coast where the Pacific Ocean meets Oregon via wave. I managed to find my slippers in the dark and slipped them on. I look up to the sky and whoa! That was quite the different world up there. The Milky Way was completely unfolded in all of its arc-shaped glory across the night sky. I could see thousands upon thousands of stars, each a world and perhaps a solar system in its own right. I was awestruck by the sheer beauty above me; it felt like another realm had opened up to me in that moment, a moment that was etched in my long-term memory. I was perhaps nine or ten years old.
This world in the dark is the one that National Geographic photographer Babak Tafreshi aims to bring to life for people around the world through his photographs. Born in Tehran, Iran in 1978, Tafreshi initially found a fascination with the night sky as a 13-year-old looking through his neighbor’s telescope at the moon’s crater-ridden surface. He found a budding interest in astrophotography after he saw “Earthrise”, the iconic photo showing Earth as a blue marble in the emptiness of space taken by an Apollo 8 astronaut from lunar orbit. He started shooting star trails and various celestial events such as meteor showers, comets and eclipses. Finding inspiration in photography giants such as David Malin and Ansel Adams, Tafreshi came to find that the photography niche best suited for his interests was not just shooting night sky objects through a telescope, but rather the wider perspective of earthly landscapes with the stars shining above.
Graduating from high school, he already knew he wanted to be involved in some combination of astronomy, science, and photojournalism as his life’s work. He went to college, got a degree in physics, and worked as an editor then editor-in-chief for Nojum, an Iranian astronomy magazine, for a decade. But he never forgot his earlier roots in photography–he began to regularly submit images to Sky and Telescope Magazine and became an official contributing photographer for them in 2008. A year later, he won the Lennart Nilsson Award, at that time the most prestigious science photography award, for his photos’ ability to connect viewers with the night sky along with a NASA Cassini imaging scientist, Carolyn Porco. This opened doors for him to start contributing his photos to the National Geographic news site; his unique portfolio and specialty led National Geographic editors to accept his pitch for becoming a contributing photographer in 2012. These days, his Instagram feed features awe-inspiring images of aurorae, star trails, the Milky Way, and starry skies above earthly landscapes that have been seemingly transformed by this new perspective, with the brightest stars popping out like little gems.
“The night sky is my second home,” Tafreshi tells me in an email interview. It’s a home that evokes for him deep feelings of “peace, enjoyment, and eternity,” as he put it.
But it is more than just a beautiful world in the dark; the wonder of seeing a full sky of stars is just one of the many reasons to preserve dark skies. According to the International Dark Sky Association, light pollution disrupts the natural cycles of various wildlife species. For example, it can mess up the nocturnal breeding ritual of wetland frogs and toads, lead baby sea turtles to crawl towards the bright lights on land instead of towards the ocean, increase the number of bird-building collisions when birds are drawn to the bright lights of cities, and disrupt the seasonal cues for bird migration and cause them to miss out on ideal resources at their destinations. Tafreshi also points out that fireflies are not seen in places with intense light pollution.
“If we lose our natural dark night skies, we lose the best connection to our origin and future…A dark night sky is an essential element of our nature, a heritage to preserve for all things on this planet,” Tafreshi reflects.
He points out that most of the younger generation have never seen a true dark sky, and that 80% of North Americans have never seen the Milky Way. Though we should normally be able to see about 5000 stars with the naked eye in a true dark sky, we can see few or no stars in most urban skies today, completely blocked out by the overwhelming city lights.
“Seeing a truly dark night sky is a must-see experience for each of us, moments one can never forget,” he insists, which makes it all the more lamentable that so few people get this experience.
Wanting to do something more than just talk about the importance of night skies, Tafreshi co-founded The World At Night (TWAN) in 2007.
“Sitting around a campfire one night with photographers from several nations I was struck by the diversity of our skin tones and languages and visualized how a common passion for the night sky could bring peace and understanding between cultures,” he says of a 2001 trip to Africa to chase a solar eclipse that eventually gave inspiration to the TWAN initiative.
TWAN is a volunteer initiative comprised of the best night sky photographers from all over the world, who contribute to a growing collection of photos featuring natural landscapes, earthly phenomena and historical sites against a backdrop of stars, planets, and the occasional streak of a comet or meteor. They all share a common passion for sharing the wonder of the night sky, both as a uniter of humanity and to generate public interest in preserving dark skies for generations to come.
Human development in an area tends to overshadow the natural lights of the stars, and Tafreshi therefore often finds himself traveling to far-flung corners of the planet for his work, including the high-altitude Atacama Desert in Chile and the Canary Islands off of northwestern Africa which are two of his favorite stargazing locations. He stresses the importance of preparing at least several weeks ahead for these major trips to remote places. Besides the safety preparations–scouting a planned location in daylight, letting others know where you’re planning to go, not going alone, and bringing proper clothing for cold night-shooting sessions–he also makes sure he researches weather forecasts, moonlight conditions, light pollution conditions, celestial phenomena, altitude, and the local geography. In addition, he uses planning apps to plan out his desired shots.
He also stresses the need to be flexible on such trips, as plans can change under unforeseen circumstances and one should always be ready to adapt. He tells the story of a planned December 2021 expedition to Antarctica that he was going to join until a covid outbreak aboard the Antarctica ship cancelled the expedition. He ended up capturing the granite face of Fitz Roy, a 13-km hike in Los Glaciares National Park on the border of Chile and Argentina all with his heavy photographic equipment in tow, under a night sky.
In the field, Tafreshi is witness to the magnificent, the wild, the mundane, and sometimes the slightly terrifying. Some photo sessions are forever etched in his memory because of the sheer magnificence of it all–the rainbow dancing curtains of aurorae in Lapland, or the summer Milky Way in all its glory bridging the ends of the earth over giant sandstones in the Sahara desert. And then there are the unexpected moments, such as the time during his 2001 trip to Zambia when he had been all set up to shoot the Milky Way over a river in Kafue National Park. While setting up, he noticed a large rock in the foreground that was perfectly positioned to be light-painted during the shoot. He proceeded with the shot, but while illuminating the “rock” it started moving and two shining eyes started turning. It turned out that he had disturbed a massive hippo that then started charging toward Tafreshi!
The biggest theme of his work? Bringing people together. “I am constantly reminded each time I stand under a dark night sky that the sky belongs to everyone and can be a unifying roof above all religions, cultures, and countries,” Tafreshi says.
