If you’re a stickler for space photography, take a couple of moments out of your day to sit back and enjoy a breathtaking timelapse video by French filmmaker Guillaume Juin. Comprising more than 80GB worth of photos taken by ISS-based astronauts over a three-year period, you’ll have to remind yourself halfway through that this is the real deal and not some CGI effort served up by a Hollywood movie studio.
The stunning piece of work showcases the very best of the publicly available timelapse sequences, with Juin crediting “the crew members of ISS expeditions 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, shot from 2011 to 2014” for creating the material.
The filmmaker says in a Vimeo post that he wanted to use the photos to “do something different from what has been done before with those shots. Something more dynamic and fast. After all, ISS travels through space at 28,000km/h!”
He also suggests some moments to watch out for in the video, including at 1’11 when you can catch a refueling shuttle disintegrating as it heads toward Earth. There’s also a neat segment at 1’20 when a telecom satellite launches from the ISS into orbit.
Juin adds, “The little green and purple lights you can see at 1’57 are respectively fishing boats and oil platforms offshore with the big city of Bangkok nearby.” The ISS itself pops in and out of shot along the way, while some of the most impressive imagery shows the remarkable sight of a colorful aurora occurring over Earth.
Adobe’s After Effects software was used by Juin to administer some subtle changes to the visuals, while Premiere was used for editing. The highly polished production comes in at just under three minutes and plays with a technopop tune from Vincent Tone.
[Source: Guillaume Juin / Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center]
