If you feel your day is lacking in shockingly beautiful space-wonder, look no further.
Occupied and operated by a multinational crew of astronauts for almost 12 years, the International Space Station (ISS) is as much a testament to human co-operation as it is to our fondness for exploration and engineering. Although it spends most of its time engaged in scientific experiments of assorted stripes, cameras mounted to various sections of the craft take a few seconds every now and again to document the spectacular views that the ISS hurtles past on a daily basis. To expand on the beauty of these images, photographer Knate Myers decided to create a stop-motion film from select night-time shots taken by the ISS and its crew. In short, it’s spectacular. Hit that full-screen and take a few moments. Breathtaking, no?
Named “View From the ISS at Night,” the video is composed entirely of slightly touched-up shots from the darkside wanderings of the ISS. Set to John Murphy’s haunting and powerful Adagio in D Minor, the film gives as much in motion sickness as it does in wonder.
The journey around Earth is one that the ISS has made an astonishing number of times, with its odometer registering 1.5 billion statute miles when it celebrated its first decade of continuous human occupation back in November 2010. At that point, the vessel had made 57,361 orbits around our planet. For reference, NASA points out that the distance the ISS traveled in its first decade is roughly equivalent to eight full trips around the sun.
If you enjoyed this, you’ll be glad to hear that “View From the ISS at Night” is by no means the only time-lapse space-film on the internet (though between you and me, it’s probably one of the prettiest and most well-made). If you’re interested in similar pieces, Vimeo’s NASA Timelapse Club might be a good place to start.
Source: Vimeo
