Astronaut Don Pettit Demystifies the Art of Taking Photographs in Space

in Astronomy, Photography, Video - Science | November 9th, 2012

Over the years, we’ve shown you Don Pet­tit’s work — his many time­lapse videos tak­en from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. (Find some below.) By now, we take these videos almost for grant­ed. We watch the breath­tak­ing scenery flow by, and we shrug our shoul­ders a bit. Rarely do we step back and think: holy mack­er­el, this cat is tak­ing art­ful videos in space. Nor do we won­der: how does one take pic­tures in zero grav­i­ty any­how?

It’s fas­ci­nat­ing when you think about it. And, now Don Pet­tit gives you a glimpse inside his cre­ative process. Speak­ing at the Lumi­nance 2012 con­fer­ence in New York City, Pet­tit explains the chal­lenges of pho­tograph­ing on the ISS — the equip­ment required, the quick deci­sions you need to make, the obsta­cles that get in the way, the aes­thet­ic choic­es you need to con­sid­er, etc. And then he gets into some intrigu­ing ques­tions. Like how do you cap­ture the col­ors of the auro­ra bore­alis? or what fab­u­lous pho­tographs can infrared pho­tog­ra­phy yield?

His talk runs 30 min­utes, and it will inter­est the casu­al observ­er or the all-out pho­tog­ra­phy geek.

Don Pet­tit Videos from the ISS:

Ani­mat­ed Auro­ra Bore­alis from Orbit

Great Cities at Night: Views from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

What It Feels Like to Fly Over Plan­et Earth

Star Gaz­ing from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (and Free Astron­o­my Cours­es Online)

via Metafil­ter

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The Known Universe: The Hayden Planetarium’s Tour of the Cosmos Gets a Hans Zimmer Soundtrack

in Astronomy, Music, Video - Science | October 30th, 2012

The Ger­man com­pos­er Hans Zim­mer has made a name for him­self (and earned a star on the Hol­ly­wood Walk of Fame) by cre­at­ing orig­i­nal scores for films. You’ve heard his music, even if you haven’t heard of him. The Lion King, The Dark Knight and Incep­tion are a few of the films he scored.

If you’ve seen Incep­tion then the music behind this video will sound famil­iar. Zim­mer’s music plays behind a small video with vast sub­ject mat­ter: The Known Uni­verse, a six minute tour of, that’s right, the entire known uni­verse. Put togeth­er in 2009 by the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um in NYC, the video orig­i­nal­ly had a more New Agey, orches­tral score. Zimmer’s track is beau­ti­ful and thank­ful­ly some­body decid­ed to lay it down behind the Plan­e­tar­i­um’s video. The results are amaz­ing, a slick­er ver­sion of Charles and Ray Eames’ famous film Pow­ers of Ten, but with a more dis­tant start­ing and end­ing point.

Where Pow­ers of Ten start­ed its tour out at a bird’s eye lev­el above Earth, The Known Uni­verse begins above the planet’s high­est point, above the Himalayan Moun­tains, and quick­ly pans out to show the Moon’s orbit, the orbits of the oth­er plan­ets in our solar sys­tem, and beyond.

Real­ly beyond—all the way into the after­glow of the Big Bang. And even though it’s a sim­u­la­tion, it’s an accu­rate one.

The Known Uni­verse was made using the Dig­i­tal Uni­verse Atlas, a four-dimen­sion­al map of the uni­verse main­tained and updat­ed by astro­physi­cists at the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry. (You can down­load your own copy here.)

Slip into your head­phones and enjoy Zimmer’s music. The piece is called “Time (We Plants are Hap­py Plants Remix)” and it’s a tune­ful, upbeat sound­track that’s out of our galaxy.

Are you watch­ing, Carl Sagan?

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Find more of her work at .

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Hurricane Sandy Seen from Outer Space, in Timelapse Motion

in Video - Science | October 29th, 2012

Hov­er­ing some 22,300 miles above Earth, the GOES-14 satel­lite, oper­at­ed by the Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion, cap­tured images of Hur­ri­cane Sandy bar­rel­ing its way across the Atlantic yes­ter­day. The video above puts into ani­ma­tion a series of images tak­en over an 11 hour peri­od. Off to the left, you see the state of North Car­oli­na, which looks sad­ly small com­pared to the 900-mile-wide storm. For any­one liv­ing on the east coast, you might want to check out this resource that offers advice on what to do before, dur­ing, and after a hur­ri­cane. Stay safe, and we’ll see you on the oth­er side of the storm.

Note: Below you will find an alter­nate view pro­vid­ed by the NASA God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter. This ani­ma­tion brings togeth­er satel­lite obser­va­tions from Octo­ber 26 through Octo­ber 29 2012.

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What an Astronaut’s Camera Sees (and What a Geographer Learns About Our Planet) from the ISS

in Astronomy, Video - Science | October 6th, 2012

Justin Wilkin­son has a pret­ty cool sound­ing gig. He’s the chief geo­sci­en­tist at NASA, and he learns all about plan­et Earth from space. When astro­nauts head to the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (ISS), Wilkin­son asks them to snap pic­tures of var­i­ous geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions. And, from this van­tage point 250 miles above the plan­et’s sur­face, he learns many things — for exam­ple, he tells Slate, “there are a lot more exam­ples of a geo­graph­i­cal phe­nom­e­non called an inland delta or megafan—that is, deltas formed far from coastlines—than was once thought.”

Out of Wilkin­son’s research comes some great pic­tures and videos, and today we’re fea­tur­ing two clips. The first video above shows you what an astro­naut sees at night, giv­ing you an aer­i­al tour of cities and coast­lines in the Amer­i­c­as, the Mid­dle East and Europe. The equal­ly impres­sive video below gives you stel­lar shots (in day­light) of Namib­ia, Tunisia, Mada­gas­car, Sici­ly, Chi­na, Iran, and Utah. You’ll find these videos added to our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos. Cours­es on astron­o­my can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online.  h/t @stevesilberman

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Reef View: Google Gives Us Stunning Underwater Shots of Great Coral Reefs

in Google, Photography, Technology, Video - Science | September 26th, 2012

Most of us have looked up our own address­es using Google Street View. But have you ever wished you could vir­tu­al­ly dive right into the ocean, lake or riv­er near your home?

It may not be long until you can. Google has tak­en its Street View mod­el, com­plete with direc­tion­al arrows and swipe-con­trolled scal­ing, and plunged into the watery uni­verse.

In a col­lab­o­ra­tion with a major sci­en­tif­ic study of the ocean, Street View now includes panoram­ic views of six of the world’s liv­ing coral reefs. These images, shot using a spe­cial cam­era, allow us to zoom in and see schools of fish and sea tur­tles make their way over the sea floor off the coast of Australia’s Heron Island. Check out the shape and tex­ture of this ancient vol­canic rock near Apo Island in the Philip­pines.

Above the Moloki­ni Crater near Maui you might be sur­prised to stum­ble upon some oth­er snorklers.

Scoot­ing along is amaz­ing­ly fun and the pho­to­graph­ic clar­i­ty is incred­i­ble. Take a cool swim with a man­ta ray and an under­wa­ter pho­tog­ra­ph­er off the Great Bar­ri­er Reef. It real­ly does feel like you’re there—only you’re not (and the Google water­marks bring you back to real­i­ty ).


View Larg­er Map

Pho­tos come cour­tesy of the Catlin Seav­iew Sur­vey, an inter­na­tion­al study of the oceans. Researchers use a con­tin­u­al 360 degree panoram­ic cam­era to cap­ture under­wa­ter images. In deep­er trench­es, they send the cam­era down on robots.

Sci­en­tists with the study say that some 95 per­cent of the ocean still hasn’t been seen by the human eye. Short of trav­el­ing to all these spots our­selves, this may be our best chance to bring that num­ber down.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Per­pet­u­al Ocean: A Van Gogh-Like Visu­al­iza­tion of our Ocean Cur­rents

Google Street View Opens Up a Look at Shackleton’s Antarc­tic

Tour the Ama­zon with Google Street View; No Pass­port Need­ed

Google Art Project Expands, Bring­ing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Muse­ums to the Web

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. See more of her work at .

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The Final Descent of NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity Captured in High Resolution

in Astronomy, Video - Science | August 21st, 2012

A few weeks back, we showed you the first grainy footage of NASA’s rover, Curios­i­ty, land­ing on the dusty sur­face of Mars. And we promised to fol­low up with high­er res footage when it became avail­able. Well, it’s now online and on dis­play above. Just to recap, the video shows the final descent of Curios­i­ty, from the point where it jet­ti­sons its heat shield to the moment when it touch­es down on the mar­t­ian sur­face. The video was stitched togeth­er with 666 images tak­en at a rate of four per sec­ond.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Find Astron­o­my cours­es in our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Online Cours­es

Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Ray Brad­bury Reads Mov­ing Poem on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mis­sion

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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What If Everyone Jumped at Once? What Color is a Mirror? Big Questions Answered in Viral Videos

in Video - Science | August 21st, 2012

Michael Stevens knows some­thing about viral videos. Yes, he’s a Googler who works on Pro­gram­ming Strat­e­gy at YouTube. That gives him some pro­fes­sion­al bona fides. But he also rolls up his sleeves and pro­duces his own wild­ly pop­u­lar videos under the Vsauce ban­ner. Per­haps you’ll remem­ber when Stevens asked the ques­tion late last year: Just how much does the entire inter­net — all 5 mil­lion ter­abytes of infor­ma­tion — actu­al­ly weigh?  (That got 1.3 mil­lion views, putting it cer­tain­ly into viral ter­ri­to­ry.) Two weeks ago, Stevens returned with anoth­er tan­ta­liz­ing ques­tion: What col­or is a mir­ror? Hint: It’s not what you think. And now, just two days ago, he dropped this ques­tion on us: What would hap­pen if every­one on the plan­et jumped at once? Catch it below.

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What Would It Be Like to Fly Through the Universe?

in Astronomy, Video - Science | August 15th, 2012

Of course, the ques­tion has crossed your mind, at least once: What would it be like to fly through the uni­verse? Now you can find out.

Accord­ing to NASA’s Astron­o­my Pic­ture of the Day web­site, the clip above offers per­haps the best sim­u­la­tion yet. The ani­mat­ed flight takes you through 400,000 galax­ies (each spot rep­re­sents one galaxy) and brings you to a point 1.3 bil­lion light years from Earth. And that’s just a small slice of the larg­er uni­verse. Miguel Aragon-Cal­vo and Alex Sza­lay (both of Johns Hop­kins) pro­duced the video along with Mark Sub­barao of the Adler Plan­e­tar­i­um using images from the Sloan Dig­i­tal Sky Sur­vey.

On a relat­ed note, don’t miss What the f#ck has NASA done to make your life awe­some?. It will remind you what NASA’s doing with tax­pay­er fund­ing.

Plus we have great Astron­o­my cours­es in our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Online Cours­es.

via Metafil­ter

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