Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

See the Latest Jaw-Dropping Aurora Views from the ISS

This is incredible — the shimmering green aurora almost reaches up and touches the International Space Station in this latest video released by the NASA Crew Earth Observations website. The sequence of shots to create this video was taken by the crew of Expedition 30 on January 25, 2012 from 09:27:08 to 09:32:16 GMT, on a pass from northwestern Wisconsin to southeastern Quebec, near the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Below are more views of the aurora as the ISS passes over the Pacific Ocean to the west coast of the US, and then an additional video shows a pass over the US to the Atlantic Ocean.

Just beautiful.
Continue reading “See the Latest Jaw-Dropping Aurora Views from the ISS”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Timelapse: Return to the Night Sky at Joshua Tree

Gavin Heffernan’s latest timelapse is a stunning look at the night sky over Joshua Tree National Park in California. You’ll be transported from Earth to space and back to Earth again, seeing the Milky Way in all its glory, plus meteors and a satellite pass or two. This is Gavin’s second visit to Joshua Tree (see the first video here) and was shot with a Canon EOD 7D with a EF-S18-135mm Zoom Lens 3.5, and a Canon EOS 5D Mk II with a Canon Prime 24mm f1.4 L-Series.

Posted on by Jason Major

The Best ISS Video Ever? You Decide.


Is this the best video footage ever of photos taken from the International Space Station? ISS astronaut and Expedition 29 commander Mike Fossum seems to think so.

If anyone would know what a good ISS video is, he would! So watch, and decide for yourself.

Video uploaded by YouTube user bitmeizer. Made from sequences of still photographs taken by Expedition 29 crew members, the time-lapse videos have been digitally smoothed out and a soundtrack added, along with some transition effects.

Original video segments courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center. See more at the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Timelapse: Atacama Starry Nights

The Atacama Desert of Chile has been called “an astronomer’s paradise,” with its stunningly dark, steady and transparent skies. It is home to some of the world’s leading telescopes, such as the Very Large Telescope (VLT) is located on Paranal. Babak Tafreshi, an astronomer, journalist and director of The World at Night (TWAN) is creating a series of timelapse videos from Paranal, and this is his latest. Just beautiful. You can see more at his Vimeo page.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Behind the Scenes at the Keck Telescope

Who knew there were so many moving parts to operate a telescope? This is a great behind the scenes video of what really takes place up at the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. About 125 people work full-time at the Keck Observatory to operate the two ten-meter telescopes. The intricate fine-tuning and elaborate attention to detail is amazing. “Keeping those telescopes on-sky every night is the summit crew of the Operations Department. This video is dedicated to the guys of the Keck daycrew who make it possible,” wrote Keck engineer Andrew Cooper, who compiled this unique and must-watch video. He details the techniques he used at his Vimeo page for this video.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

5 Hours of Beautiful Comet Lovejoy in 30 Seconds

Colin Legg from Esperance, Australia has been documenting Comet Lovejoy’s holiday gift to the southern hemisphere, and this is his latest — and possibly last — timelapse, as the comet has started to fade. This one covers almost 5 hours of Legg’s Comet Lovejoy views as seen during the early morning hours of December 27, 2011. “I used a tracking device to track in azimuth only to maximize coverage,” Legg said. “If you look closely at the head in the 2nd half you can see it moving against the stars.”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Another AMAZING Space Station Timelapse — with Aurora

What more can we say? The view from the International Space Station is incredible, and this latest time-lapse sequence of photographs was put together by Michael König. These views are taken with a special low-light 4K-camera now on the Space Station, and covers August to October, 2011. The crews of expedition 28 & 29 were behind the camera, while König refurbished, smoothed, retimed, denoised, deflickered, and cut, etc. You can see all the images taken with this new camera at the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory website, The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Stunning Timelapse Video of Earth and Sky, Volume 2

Almost a year ago we featured a timelapse video by videographer Dustin Farrell that showed the beauty of our Earth and sky. He’s now completed a second video which is just absolutely beautiful. Of particular interest to Universe Today readers is how Farrell was able to capture the stunning shimmering of stars at night and he even got several long-trailing meteors to make a cameo. Farrell says every frame of this video is a raw still from a Canon 5D2 DSLR and processed with Adobe software. “In Volume 2 I again show off my beautiful home state of Arizona and I also made several trips to Utah,” he writes on his Vimeo page. “This video has some iconic landmarks that we have seen before. I felt that showing them again with motion controlled HDR and/or night timelapse would be a new way to see old landmarks.”

Just gorgeous. Watching in HD with a big screen is recommended. Farrell adds that part 3 may be on the way. (Yay!)