Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

A Night-Sky Timelapse You Don’t Want to Miss

Still image from the timelapse, "Illusion of Lights: A Journey into the Unseen." Credit and copyright: Brad Goldpaint Photography.

It’s an old story: a couple leave their jobs, sell everything, and live in motorhome to capture footage and imagery of the night sky.

Wait… what?

This unique story is exactly what Brad and Marci Goldpaint did. They left their jobs and traveled throughout the western US in an RV to begin educating the public about the damaging effects of light pollution. They wanted to help reconnect people with the simple beauty of the night sky and have been teaching photography workshops and gathering footage for a new timelapse called “Illusion of Lights: A Journey into the Unseen.”

With breathtaking scenes and soaring music, this video “introduces you to the concept of movement and time that visually explores our night skies,” says Brad on Vimeo.

We’ve featured images and timelapses from Brad before, and he shared how the sudden loss of his mother caused him to reassess his goals and priorities. Since 2009 he’s been working on outdoor photography and has now dedicated his work to sharing images of the night sky with others.

For this timelapse, Brad said he “spent countless nights traversing in the dark, carrying heavy camera equipment, and braving the dark unseen.” He dealt with lightning storms, dangerous winds, and up-close encounters with bears and other wildlife. Sometimes, after spending days hiking to a remote location and with optimistic weather reports, Mother Nature showed up and ruined his opportunity to get the shot.

A few highlights: at about 2:00 there is an exploding meteor with a persistent train that is stunning. You’ll also see strange lights on Mount Rainier. Brad explained these lights are from people climbing the mountian at night in hopes of reaching the summit by sunrise the following day. The white lights you see are from their headlamps. “Can you imagine climbing up a mountain in the middle of the night?” he asks?

Another still from "Illusions of Light." Credit and copyright: Brad Goldpaint Photography.
Another still from “Illusions of Light.” Credit and copyright: Brad Goldpaint Photography.

For more about this film see their website.

Illusion of Lights: A Journey into the Unseen from Goldpaint Photography on Vimeo.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

New Timelapse Shows Urban Nightscapes Without Light Pollution

A simulation of what it might look like to see the night sky from within a city setting. Credit and copyright: Sergio Garcia Rill.

What if we could have the best of both worlds, where a vibrant city didn’t interfere with the view of the night sky? That was the thought of astrophotographer Sergio Garcia Rill when he decided to create simulated versions called “Urban Nightscapes.”

“I have been shooting astrophotography nightscapes for a few years now, but due to light pollution I need to travel hours away from the city to be able to see and photograph the night sky,” Rill wrote on his website. “But I wanted to make a combination of what it might be to see the night sky from within the city and my Urban Nightscapes series was born.”

His first video includes Texas cities of Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, and he makes it clear, the images and video he’s produced are mockup views.

“The stars in the video have been added through digital manipulation and the sky doesn’t look that way inside the city due to the light pollution,” Rill clarified. “I did my best effort to try to simulate the sky as it would have looked without light pollution but I am aware that not all the segments have achieved that, and I’m aware that this kind of shots are (at least at the moment) impossible to do in camera.

Enjoy the video above, and we’ll look forward to more in the future! Find out more about Rill’s project on his website.

Urban Nightscapes Texas from Sergio Garcia Rill on Vimeo.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Wow! Epic 4K Timelapse of Aurora Over Iceland and Greenland

Screenshot from 'Two Lands: Greenland and Iceland' by Joe Capra.

Holy Northern Lights, Batman! This new timelapse is just beautiful! Photographer Joe Capra traveled to Greenland and Iceland to shoot 10 nights of the arctic Aurora. Not only was the aurora absolutely stunning, but the landscape is equally beautiful. Joe said that all the footage was shot in super high resolution 4K Ultra HD, and you can even see the bright aurora reflected in small rivers and streams.

Here are some of the locations Joe shot the footage: Greenland locations include the Kangerlussuaq, Ilulissat, Ilimanaq, Ilulissat Ice Fjord, Russell Glacier, Greenland Icecap, and Disko Bay. Iceland locations include the South Coast, Snæfellsnes Peninsula, Kirkjufell, and Grundarfjörður.

Check out more of Joe’s work at his website Scientifantastic.

Two Lands – Greenland | Iceland from SCIENTIFANTASTIC on Vimeo.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Video: Fly Over a Weird Landscape on Mars in 3-D

Hydraotes Chaos is a typical example of ‘chaotic terrain.’ This large basin lies in the Martian highlands, near the equator. Credit: ESA.

This isn’t quite like Luke’s trench run in the Battle of Yavin, but it’s waaay more awesome in that this is real.

Go grab your red–green or red–blue 3-D glasses (you always have a pair right by your desk, right?) and enjoy this great flyover video from ESA showcasing some very interesting landforms on Mars that planetary geologists refer to as ‘chaotic terrain.’ There’s nothing quite like this on Earth, and scattered throughout a large area to both the west and east of Valles Marineris are hundreds of isolated mountains up to 2,000 meters high. “Seen from orbit, they form a bizarre, chaotic pattern,” say scientists from the Mars Express orbiter.

What created this weird landscape? Scientists think that during Mars’ early history, water in the form of ice was stored in cavities beneath the surface of the highlands; this was then heated and thawed out. It was then placed under so much pressure that it escaped to the surface with great force through fissures and fault zones. As it flowed out, the water eroded the terrain and gradually left behind the striking landscape visible today. Another factor supporting this theory is that many of the chaotic terrains on Mars are located at the head of large outflow channels, through which enormous quantities of water flowed out of the highlands towards the northern lowlands.

The data used to generate the images and the simulated flyover were acquired with the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express orbiter.

See more imagery and details here.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Our Curiosity: Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Felicia Day Narrate Video About Mars Rover

A still from the "Our Curiosity" video by Jeff Marlow/Caltech. Via @MarsCuriosity

In honor of the 2nd anniversary of the Curiosity rover reaching Mars, Caltech has put out a wonderful new video about the plucky little rover that has captured the hearts and imaginations of people around the world. And some familiar voices do the narration: astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson and actress Felicia Day. The video was created by Caltech planetary scientist Jeff Marlow, and he called it a “love letter” to the rover.

“As scientifically productive as the mission has been, Curiosity’s inspirational capacity may be its true value, its ability to make us feel as if we too are there, crunching on red dirt, pondering the planet’s past environments,” Marlow wrote on Wired.

Enjoy the look back at Curiosity’s travels so far. If you’re like me, the last line in the video (spoken by de Grasse Tyson) will really get you.

Find out more about the video at ourcuriosity.org, where they promise a “making of” video and more will be available soon.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Awesome Video of a Satellite in Orbit

Image of the TechDemoSat-1 in orbit, taken minutes after separation of the satellite from the Soyuz-2 launcher and shows a view of the Earth from Space, with the spacecraft's Antenna Pointing Mechanism in view. Credit: SSTL.

Here’s a great video from a camera mounted on the exterior of the TechDemoSat-1, an in-orbit technology demonstration mission from the UK. It launched on July 8, 2014 on a Soyuz-2, and the video shows the satellite moments after separation from the upper stage. The satellite even took a selfie, below.

The video shows the satellite’s rotation and reveals a spectacular vista of “blue marble” Earth (visible is cloudy skies over the Pacific, south of French Polynesia).

It’s interesting to note that some identified flying objects zip past the field of view: At :25 seconds, the Fregat upper stage of the Soyuz-2 rocket appears as a gold object passing away from the satellite left to right at a distance of approximately 60 meters. At :34 seconds a white “dot” crosses the frame left to right – which has been identified as one of the other satellites that shared the ride into orbit with TechDemoSat-1.

“It is very rare to see actual footage of our satellites in orbit,” said Sir Martin Sweeting, Executive Chairman of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL), the company behind the mission, “and so viewing the video taken from TechDemoSat-1 moments after separation from the rocket has been a hugely rewarding and exciting experience for everyone at SSTL. We are delighted with the progress of commissioning the TechDemoSat-1 platform, and are looking forward to the next phase – the demonstration of a range of new technologies being flown on this innovative mission.”

The satellite is roughly the size of a refrigerator but wieghs just 150kg. TechDemoSat (TDS-1) carries eight separate payloads from UK academia and industry plus other payloads from SSTL for product development. Find out more here from SSTL.

Posted on by Jason Major

Stunning 3D Tours of Two Well-Known Nebulae

Two videos recently released by the Hubble team take us on a tour of two famous and intriguing cosmic objects: the stellar wind-blown “celestial snow angel” Sharpless 2-106 and the uncannily equine Horsehead Nebula, imaged in infrared wavelengths by the HST.

Using Hubble imagery complemented with data from the Subaru Infrared Telescope and ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy — VISTA, for short — the videos show us an approximation of the three-dimensional structures of these objects relative to the stars surrounding them, providing a perspective otherwise impossible from our viewpoint on Earth.

The stellar nursery Sharpless 2-106 is above; hop on the Horsehead Nebula tour below:
Continue reading “Stunning 3D Tours of Two Well-Known Nebulae”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Simply Breathtaking Night Sky Timelapse: “Huelux” by Randy Halverson

An aurora behind a building storm. From the timelapse 'Huelux.' Credit and copyright: Randy Halverson.

Regular readers of Universe Today will be well-acquainted with the photography and timelapse work of Randy Halverson. He’s just released his latest timelapse and in a word, it is breathtaking. Aurora, thunderstorms — sometimes both at once — and, of course, stunning views of the night sky.

Randy shot the footage during April-November 2013 in South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah. “The weather in 2013 made it difficult for me to get some of the shots I wanted,” Randy said on Vimeo. “There were many times I planned to shoot the Milky Way or Aurora, and the clouds would roll in. But that also allowed me to get more night storm timelapse than I have any other year.”

He added that the aurora sometimes appeared without warning. In the video, be on the lookout for slow and fast moving satellites, quick meteors and slower moving airplanes. “The meteors are hard to see in timelapse, but you may see a quick flash because they only last one frame,” he said. “If you see a light moving across the sky, it is either an airplane or satellite, not a meteor.”

Sit back, put this on full screen and full sound and take a well-deserved break from your day!

Thanks once more to Randy Halverson for continuing to share his handiwork! Find out more about this timelapse at Randy’s website, Dakotalapse.

Huelux from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Video: These Children from Greece (and Poland) Helped Wake Up the Rosetta Spacecraft

An artist concept of the Philae lander on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Credit: Astrium - E. Viktor/ESA

The European Space Agency asked for help in waking up the Rosetta spacecraft from 31 months of deep-space hibernation, and sponsored a fun video contest. The votes are in and the winning video comes from the 1,002 children of the Ellinogermaniki Agogi Primary School in Greece. Not only is the video heartwarming, but original music was composed using a “3/2 time signature symbolizing the five gravity assists that Rosetta got from the Earth and Mars. Theme ends with a perfect 5th (interval ratio 3:2) symbolizing Jupiter (5th planet), Rosetta’s ultimate orbit point.”

Wow.

There were 218 entries and 75,000 people voted. Entries came in from notables like Chris Hadfield, Bill Nye, and singer Tasmin Archer.

“We were truly impressed by the effort that all of you put into your videos, from getting your pets, friends and families involved and constructing fantastic model Rosetta spacecraft,”ESA said, “to storyboarding brilliant stop-motion animations with Lego, and writing entire songs and choreographing dance routines for dozens or even hundreds of passionate Rosetta fans.”

The top ten vote-getting videos were transmitted out to Rosetta via one of ESA’s deep-space tracking stations, and the top two video creators are invited to the control center in Darmstadt, Germany for when the Philae lander attempts landing on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in November 2014 after latching on with a harpoon. The second, equal award was given to Józef Dobrowolski, aged 17 student from Ostroleka, Poland, who is from the III Secondary School. He worked on his video himself, and he’s passionate about astronomy and started his hobby with observing the Perseid meteor shower:

You can see all ten winning videos here, or see a mashup of submitted videos, below.