Alucinante.

very nice!

superb

Very nice

wow..voted!

Jeff, it is possible to focus with live view on bright stars - even autofocus works sometimes, although it's easier with longer focal length. Another problem is, that you will get coma, the wider the aperture gets - of course this depends on the lens as well, but it's always better to stop down 2 f-stops to get sharper edges.
Look at one of my pictures for example: http://500px.com/photo/802097 - 28mm f/2,8 wide open, which resulted in a lot of coma on the edges. You can improve noise by stacking exposures together (might want to google that). For example I took 4 exposures for my image, which gave me less noise and I could tweak the colors a lot better.

Anyway, nice picture. I like the natural look & colors.

Hope you went backpacking as planned this past weekend, and if so hope you got something as nice as this. Very cool Jeff!

Brilliant work, original and beautiful!

Thanks Jack, Yvette, Alex, Mark, Tor-Erik, Jeff, Boris and Christopher!

Christopher, Even the slight light pollution on the horizon here is too much to increase exposure. I did buy the Canon 24mm f/1.4 lens for night photography, and under darker skies I have tried f/1.4 as well as shooting up to ISO 25,600 on the 5D mark ii. I also have the Canon 50mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.8 lenses for low light conditions. So far I prefer the field of view of 16mm, and I'd like to go even wider! I hope the rumors of a coming Canon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens are true! One problem with f/1.4 is the extreme difficulty obtaining sharp focus (especially under dark skies at night when you can't autofocus on something at infinity). I like to work fast, which is difficult at night. It takes too much of my shooting time to take a lot of long test exposures to fine tune focus, then working in the dark if the lens is bumped even slightly as you change shooting positions or drive to a new location, you've lost your focus and have to start all over again (all lenses f/2.8 and wider should have a mechanism to lock the focus ring). My preferred compromise is to shoot at a more focus-tolerant and DOF-flexible f/2.8, and that give me a much broader selection of lenses. Hopefully Canon will further improve low noise performance on the upcoming Canon 5D mark iii. I have used my Canon 40D at night, but to keep the exposure within 30 seconds and within the camera's ISO noise limitations I shoot at ISO 1600 using the 24mm at f/1.4, but then unfortunately the field of view is effectively only 38mm, so it's hard to fit in much in the foreground with the sky.

amazin photograph Jeff! I wonder if you could've picked up some more stars using a larger aperture? (/faster lens)

Excellent photo!

Yes! Awesome Awesome.

the photo is impressive. good choice of including the stargazing yourself :)

Gorgeous!

Outstanding, congrats!

Gorgeous self portrait and great image, Jeff !!!
Congrats on the selection and success for the final result ...

Amazing photo Jeff. Congrats on being selected as a finalist. Good luck!