I had an idea for survey planes once. During calibration, they fly grid patterns, basically like a hashmark (#), to get overlapping data for comparison.
Doing that kind of flight at night (makes sense for lidar! not so much for photo..), against a clear sky with at least some stars, and stacking the resulting photos, would give you a grid pattern of green/red/white aircraft running lights in front of the heavens.
That is the flight pattern used on calibration flights, which are used to generate the internal/external calibration values for the camera / laser installation.
Standard wide area ortho photo collection can be done with a series of parallel lines, as long as there's enough forelap/sidelap between photos. Same for standard wide area lidar collection.
I happen to live at the crossing of two major flight lines, E-W and N-S, so I might actually attempt to do that. Maybe a lot of 1 tenth exposures could be enough. Trial and errors to get started, as usual.
Doing that kind of flight at night (makes sense for lidar! not so much for photo..), against a clear sky with at least some stars, and stacking the resulting photos, would give you a grid pattern of green/red/white aircraft running lights in front of the heavens.