The night sky seems unchanging to the naked eye, but beauty is hidden beyond the limits of unaided human perception. As Earth rotates, the sky moves, revealing astronomical events that only time-lapse photography -- a series of exposures lasting for minutes apiece -- can truly capture. "There are so many things you don't normally see that you can with time-lapse," said photographer Randy Halverson, who created the video above. Halverson's work even attracted the attention of Bear McCreary, a composer who wrote the music for TV shows Battlestar Galactica, Eureka and The Walking Dead. He scored Halverson's for fun. The surge in amateur popularity of time-lapse videos, caused in part by cheaper access to quality technology and video services, hasn't gone unnoticed by Wired. Dim the lights, crank up the volume and watch some of our favorite clips in this gallery. Above: Temporal Distortion Halverson, who recently won a time-lapse video competition with one of his Milky Way clips, photographed this sequence during the summer and fall of 2011 in South Dakota, Utah and Colorado. "What you see is real, but you can't see it this way with the naked eye. It is the result of 20-30 second exposures, edited together over many hours to produce the time-lapse," Halverson wrote. At 0:53 and again at 2:17, for example, meteors with persistent trails twinkle into view. Video: Randy Halverson/Vimeo

The Mountain Landscape photographer Terje Sorgjerd trekked to El Teide, Spain's highest mountain and home to an observatory, to record this video in April 2011. On April 9, a large sandstorm swept through the Sahara Desert. Part of it reached the mountain while Sorgjerd filmed the night sky. (This footage starts 32 seconds in.) "I was sure my whole scene was ruined," Sorgjerd wrote on his video's page. "To my surprise, my camera had managed to capture the sandstorm which was backlit by Grand Canary Island, making it look like golden clouds. The Milky Way was shining through the clouds, making the stars sparkle in an interesting way." Video: TSO Photography/Vimeo

Finding Oregon Six months of time-lapse photography went into this sequence created by stargazers trekking across Oregon on a 1,600-mile road trip. "Here in Oregon ... we have three months in the year, with a 5 day window each month to plan with fingers crossed for epic star shooting conditions," wrote the video's creator Bill Price. "That's only 15 days in a year." Video: Uncage the Soul Productions/Vimeo

The City Limits Photographer Dominic Boudreault spent half a year photographing Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto, New York City and Chicago at night. He ended up with this dramatic sequence capped with crisp night-sky images toward the end. Video: Dominic/Vimeo

Yosemite HD Sheldon Neill and Colin Delehanty, two time-lapse photographers who became friends through Vimeo, collaborated on this video featuring Yosemite National Park and its crystal-clear night skies. Video: Project Yosemite/Vimeo

Aurora Borealis in Finnish Lapland 2011 During the northern winter of 2011, a Finnish production company created this nearly two-minute-long sequence of dancing auroras for Finland's tourism board. Video: Flatlight Films/Vimeo

TimeScapes 4K Combining traditional videography with time-lapse techniques, Tom Lowe offers a sample of his upcoming video about the American Southwest. Video: Tom Lowe/Vimeo