ISS Star Trails Video Sings Space In Beams Of Light
If you're looking for a lovely video to watch today while you eat lunch, journalist Christoph Malin has just what you're seeking – a "Star Trails" video showing time-lapse imagery captured by the International Space Station. The video you're about to see captures a collection of photos snapped by the ISS and places one image on top of another and another on another, making "Tron trails" through space. Accompanying this lovely set of images is music from a set of rather talented artists as well, starting with "Eileen" by Lee Rosevere and moving on to "Window #3" by Two Bicycles.
The video shows photos taken by none other than your favorite astronaut Don Pettit, a celebrity in his own right, as well as several other space-bound photographers aboard the space station. Thanks to these ISS residents photographing space in their spare time, we're able to see several artifacts in this video including the comet "Lovejoy" rising in at about 1:42. See if you can see any other fabulous moments of light convergence now!
This video was edited using Apple Motion as well as Final Cut Pro X. Malin also notes that he used the app StarStax to make the lights line up, one on top of another. In addition to stars making lines, the video includes Iridium Flashes – aka satellite tracks, meteors of several sizes, and lightning corridors within clouds. If all that isn't enough, heed this: the concept for this video comes from Malin's love of Tron, of course, as he notes here:
"Do you remember 1982's "TRON"? The Plot: A computer programmer (epic: Jeff Bridges) is digitized inside the software world of a mainframe computer, where he interacts with various programs in his attempt to get back out. I always loved the Light Cycle races and the Solar Ships...
In a way, the ISS is a solar ship, constantly rotating around us. A tiny white spot, as it can be seen racing over the sky from time to time, when illuminated by the sunset (and sunrise ;)." – Malin
Keep your eyes to the skies and hit up our science tag portal as well as our space tag portal for all the ISS news you can handle – and our ever-growing science archive, too!
[via Christoph Malin]