Spectacular Ultra-High Definition Timelapse from the Space Station

By Nancy Atkinson - September 9, 2014 at 3:39 PM UTC | Space Exploration

Holy moly! Take a look at this new 4K timelapse video from ESA created from imagery taken by astronaut

Alexander Gerst

. Before you watch, however, you might want to change your video viewing setting to as high as they can go.

The imagery was taken at a resolution of 4256 x 2832 pixels at a rate of one every second. ESA said the high resolution allowed their production team to create a 3840 x 2160 pixel movie, also known as Ultra HD or 4K.

Playing these sequences at 25 frames per second, the film runs 25 times faster than it looks for the astronauts in space. They also did some nice effects creating trails from from stars and lights from cities on Earth for that "hyper-space" look. There's a great sequence starting at about :55 of the Orbital Cygnus capsule being unberthed from the ISS and then it zooms away from the station.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com