Sure, you could go outside and spend hours, or even days or weeks, taking photos for your own timelapse. Or, if you’re feeling a little lazy and just want the most excellent of images possible, why not raid the stores from the astronauts aboard the International Space Station? They’ve captured more than enough material for everyone… and it is the very best.
Still, even with the content sorted, you still have to give credit to the person who spent the time editing it together. In this case it’s Guillaume Juin, who took 80GB of images and compressed them down to this short two minute, 50 second clip.
If you’re wondering what the video entails, here’s a snippet from the creator:
The International Space Station weigh 377 tons, orbits the earth at around 350km from the surface, and does one spin around the earth in 1h30, at 28.000k/h! At 1’11 we can see a little refuelling shuttle disintegrating back to earth. At 1’20, it’s a little telecom satellite that is launch in orbit. The little green and purple lights you can see at 1’57 are respectively fishing boats and oil platforms offshore with the big city of Bangkok nearby.
The images themselves did undergo some processing — the removal of noise, colour-grading and deflickering — but otherwise they’re as pure as they come. Not sure if I’m a fan of the music, but that doesn’t stop it from being an inspirational watch.