Jonathan Woods writes: Sleep deprivation leads people to do crazy things. For Norwegian photographer Terje Sorgjerd, a week atop Spain's highest mountain with very little shuteye produced results that even he was surprised by.

Sorgjerd talked with us about the experience of capturing the images.

Terje Sorgjerd

The Milky Way is seen above, through a Saharan sandstorm.

Terje: As I set up to shoot a five-hour sequence of the milky way [above], I got hit by a large Saharan sandstorm. I took cover behind some rocks and eventually made it over to the camera only to find that it had captured some amazing pictures of the Milky Way through the sandstorm clouds.

Jonathan: What I find remarkable about these images is the way Terje is able to capture light without significant manipulations. The human eye has much greater latitude to see details cameras cannot. High Dynamic Range is a form of manipulation that enhances images. In the captions below, Terje is asserting that by not using HDR technology, he has not substantially manipulated these images.

It is also worth mentioning that a photographer who is skilled at his or her craft can make substantial improvements to images when, as Terje references below, making adjustments to the raw image.

Terje Sorgjerd

The sun rises off Mount Teide with views of Grand Canarya. Image shot using a Canon 5D Mark II with 16-35mm/2.8LII and 3-stop graduated neutral density filter to bring out the colors. No HDR or Photoshop. Only raw adjustment.

Terje: After a magnificent view of the Milky Way, it was time to move on to shooting sunrise and what a magical sunrise we got. In the distant background you can see the neighboring island of Grand Canarya.

Terje Sorgjerd

A valley on Mount Teide. No HDR or Photoshop. Only raw adjustment. The video frame is over twice the resolution.

Terje Sorgjerd

The sun sets on Mount Teide. Photographed with a Canon 5D MarkII with 16-35mm/2.8LII and 2-stop graduated ND filter. No HDR or Photoshop. Only raw adjustment.

Terje: As you hike around this island, you will notice how regular and precise the weather patterns really are. I noticed this spot with the clouds moving in a very nice pattern and decided to mark it off as a sunset spot the next day. An absolute marvelous sunset it was.

Terje Sorgjerd

The milky way glows above photographer Terje Sorgjerd in a self portrait. The photo was a 30 second exposure shot through a 24mm/1.4 lens at ISO 2000. No HDR.

Terje: After seven days of hiking and shooting without sleep I was making my way down to the airport when I realized I did not have a single shot of myself and the Milky Way. This was the very last shot and the only one with myself in it. I am lit up by a macbookair screen hid about 10 meters away reflecting off a rock.

Related content:
Watch the original video on Vimeo
The northern lights, like never seen before
From San Francisco to Paris in 2 minutes (time lapse)
Month in Space
Stunning views of the sun ... and Discovery?!
Terje's website

Terje Sorgjerd

After staying up all night for a week, Norwegian photographer Terje Sorgjerd captured the aurora borealis in a way few have ever seen before.

He endured forbiddingly frigid temperatures of -15 degrees Fahrenheit while shooting 22,000 pictures of the skies near Kirkenes and Pas National Park in Norway, near the Russian border. A testament to his patience and passion, he referred to the expedition as "good fun." The results are stunning.

Terje Sorgjerd

For years Sorgjerd planned, waiting for precisely the right conditions, then packed 90 pounds of gear and headed into the wilderness. Using a motion control dolly in conjunction with professional SLR lenses, he created the time lapse video from 1.3 terabytes of pictures.

Terje Sorgjerd

The Aurora Borealis is caused by radiation from the sun, or "solar wind," interacting with Earth's magnetic field. According to Lorne McKee, a space weather forecaster for Natural Resources Canada, more solar storms are expected, since the sun recently moved from a quiet period in its 11-year solar cycle to a more active phase.

Check out excerpts of his video in our interview with Sorgjerd talking about his work.

The original video can be seen on Vimeo here.

Amateur astrophotographer Alan Friedman has done it again. Adding to an already impressive collection of outer space images, he just published two more magnificent photos of the sun. First, here's a view of a gassy prominence flaring off the sun like a cloud:

Alan Friedman

This section of the solar disk was imaged at the Winter Star Party on West Summerland Key in Florida, in the midst of 30 mph winds. The massive detached solar prominence was visible for hours. Skies were quite steady, despite the wind.

To add some perspective on the sheer magnitude of what Friedman is documenting, look at the dark spot below the prominence. That spot is roughly twice the size of the Earth. 

Using the same specialized equipment he used in October 2010 to produce the last set of breathtaking images, Friedman looks at the deep red end of the light spectrum to capture the emissions given off by hydrogen gas in the sun's atmosphere.

He also came away with a historic glimpse of Discovery as it was docked to the International Space Station, during the space shuttle's final mission.

Friedman said he captured the event, lasting just a fifth of a second, after making an 1,800-mile drive from Buffalo, N.Y., to the Winter Star Party in West Summerland Key, Fla.

He went to the Florida gathering "for the steady skies, warm temperatures and the company of good astronomy friends." But when he learned that the International Space Station would cross paths with the sun, and that the sight would be visible 20 miles north of where the star party was being held, he felt compelled to document the flyover.

"I jumped into the car with solar imaging gear, and we got set up just in time to catch it." he said. "I underestimated the narrowness of this event. We were about 5,000 feet south of the centerline in a good location... another 500 feet and we would have missed it entirely. Lucky day!"

Alan Friedman

Silhouetted by the sun, the space shuttle Discovery can be seen docked to the International Space Station during its final mission.

Friedman talks with TODAY.com's Dara Brown about his latest work:

More imagery of the sun and the shuttle:

• Stare at the sun: An unusual view by Alan Friedman
• Greatest hits from the space shuttle Discovery
• More space shots for shuttle fans
• Month in Space Pictures

NASA released a dazzling image from the Hubble Space Telescope today, showing spiral galaxy NGC 2841.

According to their release, the image was taken in 2010 through four different filters on Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. Wavelengths range from ultraviolet light through visible light to near-infrared light. NGC 2841 lies 46 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear).

NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals a majestic disk of stars and dust lanes in this view of the spiral galaxy NGC 2841 released Thursday, Feb. 17, 2010.

A bright cusp of starlight marks the galaxy's center. Spiraling outward are dust lanes that are silhouetted against the population of whitish middle-aged stars. Much younger blue stars trace the spiral arms.

Notably missing are pinkish emission nebulae indicative of new star birth. It is likely that the radiation and supersonic winds from fiery, super-hot, young blue stars cleared out the remaining gas (which glows pink), and hence shut down further star formation in the regions in which they were born. NGC 2841 currently has a relatively low star formation rate compared to other spirals that are ablaze with emission nebulae.

Related content: The Month in Space  | Today's best pictures

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

This visible image was captured by the GOES-13 satellite and shows the low pressure area stretching from the Colorado Rockies and Texas east to New England on Tuesday, Feb. 1.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Three images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA's Terra satellite were combined to create this image of the storm system over the United States on Monday, Jan. 31. White gaps are areas where the sensor did not collect data. The image has a resolution of one kilometer per pixel.

The National Weather Service is warning of a serious winter storm. It's huge - 2000 miles wide - and satellite images from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center pretty much sum it up. From the looks of things, Florida is the place to be.

See more images in the full slideshow.

The storm was bearing down on the middle of the United States on Tuesday, with freezing rain and sleet pelting several states from Texas through Ohio ahead of blizzard conditions expected overnight.

Parts of nine states — Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio — were covered by blizzard warnings, TODAY's Al Roker reported.

White-outs paralyzed Oklahoma City and the Tulsa area, where snowpack caused the partial collapse of a roof at the Hard Rock Casino. Blowing snow created drifts up to 4 feet high.

Read more.