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ISS Marks 20 Years Orbiting Earth With Longest Timelapse Ever Made In Space (petapixel.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the time-to-celebrate dept.

AmiMoJo writes: The International Space Station has been in orbit for 20 years, with the first module Zarya (Russian for "dawn") being launched on the 20th of November in 1998. To celebrate, the European Space Agency (ESA) has released the longest timelapse video made in space to date. "Captured by German astronaut Alexander Gerst, the time-lapse takes you on two trips around the world with labels marking countries that pass through the frame," reports PetaPixel. "Traveling at 28,800 km/h (17896 mph), it takes the station just 90 minutes to orbit the Earth. 21,375 individual photos shot on October 6th went into the video, which is played back at 12.5 times faster than real time."

20 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Pretty nice... by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Great job on the video, and the music too...

    Just one quibble, from reading the headline I at first was thinking I would see a 20-year time-lapse of some part of Earth, that would be pretty amazing. Oh well! This was still a really excellent trip around the globe.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re: Pretty nice... by mermeid007 · · Score: 1

      Would there be the occasional advertisement?

    2. Re: Pretty nice... by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure what you are getting at, but I didn't see any ads during the video...

      I mean, it's NASA, what would they even advertise?

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    3. Re:Pretty nice... by BoogieChile · · Score: 1

      You can see 32 year timelapses like that here -> https://earthengine.google.com...

  2. Spacewalk time by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    Time for a spacewalk, and clean the lens.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    1. Re:Spacewalk time by jdharm · · Score: 1

      I thought this video would be cool to loop on my big screen TV at home, maybe as a screen saver, but that crud on the window made me nuts. I couldn't watch it. Just skipped through to see if it ever got cleaned. It did not.

  3. Darn, it didn’t fly over the US by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2, Funny

    I wanted to see all the red and blue states...

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  4. Super cool by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    What a great video. My niggles: 1) dirt on the lens. Surely with all our science? 2) Iris takes too long to open when crossing into night. I was surprised how fast the orbit precesses, had to look up how that works (it's because Earth isn't a sphere.) The lightning flashes over the Pacific are super cool.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    1. Re:Super cool by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Hmm, make that dust on the sensor.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    2. Re:Super cool by hebcal · · Score: 2

      You're not seeing orbit precession in this video. The ground track "moves" from orbit to orbit primarily because the earth is spinning underneath a relatively stable orbit. It is true that the orbit is precessing, but it's happening much slower than you can see here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... notes that it's -3.7 degrees PER DAY. ...Whereas what is most obvious in this video is that the first orbit passes over Italy and the second over France, which is due to the -22.5 degree PER ORBIT spin of the earth below the ISS.

    3. Re:Super cool by dcw3 · · Score: 3, Informative

      No. The circumference of the earth at the equator is 24901 miles. From north to south pole, it's 24860. You're not going to notice a 41 mile difference in that video.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    4. Re:Super cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Iris takes too long to open when crossing into night.

      The Iris didn't close until the space station itself went into the Earth's shadow. Annoying, but understandable given all the stuff (solar panels, etc) in the frame.

    5. Re:Super cool by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Right, duh.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  5. Why is it blured between Beijing and Shanghai? by WaffleMonster · · Score: 3

    I don't get it. Is this some kind of compression artifact? Intentional redaction?

    The camera is stationary WRT ISS so how does blurriness follow the same position on the globe when everything around it and before and after remains in focus?

    1. Re:Why is it blured between Beijing and Shanghai? by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

      Maybe just a kind of diffuse lighting, possibly greenhouses ?

    2. Re:Why is it blured between Beijing and Shanghai? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Looks like cloud cover, or maybe smog. Because it's always at night it's hard to tell.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:Why is it blured between Beijing and Shanghai? by macklin01 · · Score: 1

      I'm guessing cloud cover. Which would tend to track with the underlying land ... Just like the clouds over much of southern Europe around 0:21 and 7:03 in the video.

      --
      OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
  6. How many pics does it take... by geekmux · · Score: 2

    ...to convince a flat-earther they're wrong?

    Apparently 21,376.

    1. Re:How many pics does it take... by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      This isn't convincing. The curvature is caused by the fisheye lense.

      ...as it is moved around what shape?

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    2. Re:How many pics does it take... by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

      This isn't convincing. The curvature is caused by the fisheye lense.

      True. But what is convincing is that after 90 minutes you come back pretty much to where you started, with some shift due to the Earth's rotation.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.