Thousands of Starry Nights Captured within Five Years along the “Belt and Road”

By Xinyi Li, EDITOR, photos credit to Dai Jianfeng

In 2014, Dai Jianfeng, a professional photographer from Chongqing, embarked on his photography for the starry sky of the countries along the “Belt and Road”. Among thousands of photos, some have appeared on the website of NASA, and periodicals including Nature and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

His first image of a starry night sky over the Himalayas took in 2014 debuted on NASA’s website and meanwhile graced the cover of the above periodicals. This photo showed gravity waves revealed in a thin layer of the glowing atmosphere called airglow.

Since then, Dai Jianfeng began shooting the starry sky of the countries along the “B&R”, to study and record their wonderful nights. Before the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in May 2017, he held a photographic exhibition “Silk Road at Night” featuring the beauty of the starry sky in these countries at Beijing Planetarium. For this photography project, he won the aid funds for young artists from China National Arts Fund in 2019.

Dai Jianfeng said, “I hope to shoot the most recognizable spot at night in the regions and countries along the ‘B&R’, to showcase their colorful natural landscapes and historical sites, as well as their unique starry sky.”

Source: People's Daily