Saturn's rings. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.
It’s been 9 years (to the day, in fact) since the Cassini spacecraft first entered orbit around Saturn and ever since it has been sending a steady stream of incredible images from the ringed planet back to Earth, bridging the 900-million-mile distance with countlesswonders and groundbreaking discoveries. The views Cassini has provided us of Saturn and its family of moons are unparalleled and unprecedented, but something one could remain in want of is the element of motion: Cassini’s cameras are designed to capture still images, not true video, and thus most of our best views of Saturn are static shots.
That’s where filmmaker Stephen van Vuuren and his current project, “In Saturn’s Rings,” comes in.
An award-winning filmmaker, musician, and photographer (and self-confessed übergeek) from South Africa, Stephen van Vuuren has spent the last several years compiling hundreds of thousands of images acquired by Cassini — as well as other exploration spacecraft — into a single high-definition feature film, one that will allow viewers to experience the beauty, grandeur, and reality of the Solar System like never before.
“In Saturn’s Rings” (formerly “Outside In”) is slated for release in IMAX theaters, planetariums, and museums in the spring of 2014 — and the first official teaser trailer is below, released today. Check it out (or visit the YouTube page to watch in original, eye-melting 4k high-resolution):
“‘In Saturn’s Rings’ is a film that’s both personal and universal, experimental and sincere, science and spirit , non-narrative and documentary. The goal is to use large screen imagery, synchronized to powerful but moving music, to create an experience for those who see it, hear it and feel it.”
– “In Saturn’s Rings” official website
This is one film that I’ll be eagerly looking forward to over the next few months, without a doubt!
Read more on van Vuuren’s official film site here, and check out a full minute of film footage (originally released in 2011) on Vimeo here. Also, you can keep up with updates on the movie’s Twitter and Facebook pages.
“Hubble: Galaxies Across Space and Time” is an award-winning IMAX Super Short film. In less than 3 minutes you can explore 10 billion years of cosmic history as you fly through one of Hubble’s iconic images, the Hubble Deep Field. These galaxies were photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of the Great Observatory Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) project. Hubble scientists and imaging specialists worked for months to extract individual galaxy images, placing them in a 3-D model according to their approximate true distances.
If you ever have the chance to see the big screen version of “Hubble 3-D IMAX,” do it. It’s an incredible cinematic view that portrays the immensity and gloriousness of our Universe like no other film I’ve seen. You can read my review of it here.
Serendipitously, at the same time we are waiting to see when and where the Russian Phobos-Grunt satellite will crash back to Earth, a new IMAX movie called “Space Junk 3-D” will open in giant screen and dome theaters. “The timing is uncanny, but we hope it will underscore the film’s intention: to raise awareness of the orbital debris issue to ensure the future of space exploration and satellite communications,” said the makers of the film.
Ever imagine creating your own IMAX movie? Cinematographer Stephen Van Vuuren is working to do just that, and has created flythough sequences from thousands of images from the Cassini spacecraft’s tour of the Saturn system. The video above is just a sampling of this non-profit, giant-screen art film effort “that takes audiences on a journey of the mind, heart and spirit from the big bang to the near future via the Cassini-Huygens Mission at Saturn,” according to the “Outside In” website.
I have seen the new Hubble 3-D IMAX movie twice now, and both times I was overcome with tears by the end of the film. It wasn’t that the story of Hubble itself was overwhelming; no, that story I already knew by heart. It wasn’t that the account of the servicing mission to save Hubble was especially dramatic; actually, I think watching the five EVAs live on NASA TV in May 2009 was more heart-pounding. And it wasn’t that the cinematography was overly stunning or that there were non-stop 3-D effects.
What this film does is portray the immensity and gloriousness of our universe, and that we are currently, serendipitously, living during an amazing era of discovery, one that humanity has never known before. Some of these discoveries we are only able to make because of this marvelous telescope and the people who laid their lives on the line to fix it and make it better. It also shows — almost subtly – that we are inexorably connected to the Universe around us, joined like the intertwining web of 3-D galaxies shown near the movie’s final scenes. We are witnessing – and are a part of – history.
The movie chronicles the 20-year life of Hubble, and focuses on the STS-125 servicing mission, the final mission to Hubble. There ARE wonderful 3-D views of Hubble itself, anchored to shuttle Atlantis’ payload bay, where the telescope appears to come out into the audience and into your lap. This includes stunning views of planet Earth spinning overhead. “This is a gift we astronauts have been given,” astronaut Mike Massimino says of the vistas that can only be seen from space.
And viewers get to experience not one, but two shuttle launches captured in the so-close-up-you-can-feel-it shots which can only be experienced in IMAX. But much of the footage from on-orbit detailing the EVAs and action inside the shuttle were shot with the regular, albeit high-tech cameras that normally NASA flies on missions, including the small “lipstick” cameras on the helmets of the spacewalkers, and some was able to be rendered in grainy, but effective 3-D. The only genuine IMAX 3-D camera on board the mission was bolted to the shuttle’s cargo bay and it carried only 5,400 feet of film – which translates into just 8 minutes of IMAX 3-D footage. Here’s an article about a 3 D Solar System
Endearing are the behind-the-scenes looks at the STS-125 mission. Astronauts joking with each other on orbit – Commander Scott Altman sticking gum under the shuttle’s “dashboard,” Massimino describing how suiting up for an EVA is like putting on a snowsuit as a child. “You need your Mom,” he says.
In both showings I attended, the scene that got the most audible reaction from the audience was Drew Feustal making a chicken salad tortilla wrap. But, hey, we all have to eat, and for those who have never seen food preparation or astronauts eating in space before, it holds a certain level of fundamental fascination.
Additionally we get to hear what is going through the minds of the astronauts on launch day. Mike Good recalls how his grandfather opened up the Universe by showing him views through a telescope. Megan McArthur glows with excitement. John Grunsfeld meticulously goes through in his mind all the tasks that lie before him and the crew.
The film quickly moves through the EVAs, highlighting anxious moments of the mission — stuck bolts, the handrail that Massimino had to rip off of Hubble, the tension of undertaking the meticulous repairs on a one-of-a-kind iconic telescope, all while wearing a bulky spacesuit. But within a 43 minute film, these situations are dealt with quickly, — and honestly, — the movie doesn’t give real justice to how tense some of these situations really were.
A vast canyon of dust and gas in the Orion Nebula from a 3-D computer model based on observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA, G. Bacon, L. Frattare, Z. Levay, and F. Summers (STScI/AURA)
But most mesmerizing in the film are 3-D visualizations of actual Hubble data. For this film, regular 2-D Hubble images were converted into 3-D environments, giving the audience the impression they are traveling through space and time.
Viewers get to experience an exhilarating ride through the Orion Nebula, swooping through a giant canyon of gas and dust, and witness star-forming regions that include dusty tadpole-shaped objects that are fledgling solar systems, likely a vision of how our own solar system once looked.
Later we travel to the distant Virgo Cluster and emerge on the other side of a black hole, and then travel back in time to witness early misshapen galaxies. Returning to more recent views that include new images from the Wide Field Camera 3 that was installed on STS-125, we see an ocean of stars in multiple wavelengths. Upon pulling away from the stars, we see 3-D galaxies interwoven like a web.
It’s these mind-numbing visions that produce a child-like sense of awe and wonder – and in my case, tears. The film is a testament to how Hubble has allowed us to see the wonders of our Universe.
I asked for reactions from the members of the audience following the premier showing of Hubble 3-D at the Kennedy Space Center IMAX, and while many commented on the amazing graphics, they also observed how small they felt in comparison to the rest of the Universe, but yet, incredibly an integral part of all that is.
The graphics were created by image processing specialists at Hubble’s Space Telescope Science Institute,– familiar names to those of us that follow Hubble : Frank Summers, Zolt Levay, Lisa Frattare, and Greg Bacon. They worked with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (more about them in a subsequent, upcoming article on Universe Today), and the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology.
Hubble 3-D was directed by Toni Myers, who has been at the helm of all the space-themed IMAX movies, and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio.
Go see the movie if you have the chance, and bring anyone who may not normally follow space exploration or astronomy. Their view of the Universe will never be the same.
For more info see the official Hubble 3-D IMAX website. Official trailer below.
