These stunning photos of the starry California sky will amaze you

A starry night sky in California is always dazzling, but this week, Big Sur looks even more magical with lights twinkling from above and below.

Brilliant blue waves are glowing under the Bixby Bridge because of a bioluminescent phytoplankton bloom.

Photographer George Krieger captured the rare sight on Monday night.

Krieger wrote on his Facebook page, “A bloom of phytoplankton was lighting up the night under the Bixby Creek Bridge. It was an amazing spectacle.”

"Several are images stacks and one or two are single frames," he said of his photos.

The phytoplankton are most likely dinoflagellates, according to Steve Haddock, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's bioluminescence expert.

Haddock told KSBW, "It is almost certainly a dinoflagellate bloom. We are also seeing relative high bioluminescence with our instruments here in Monterey Bay."

Haddock explained, "The species counts from Santa Cruz area show low to moderate numbers of the 'usual suspects' of luminous species that we would expect to cause such a bloom: Noctiluca, Lingulodinium, and Protoperidinium being some of the brightest."

"We have been getting reports of high bioluminescence down the coast since at least early January, so it is not due to the last few days of warm weather necessarily. The typical pattern leading to a bloom of dinoflagellates is an influx of nutrients (for example wind turning over the water column or rain providing runoff) followed by a calm period which allows the water to stratify (form layers). In these layers the dinoflagellates can accumulate into high concentrations before they get mixed around by subsequent windy conditions," Haddock said.

George Krieger​

George Krieger​

George Krieger​

George Krieger​