I’ve been posting some amazing time lapse videos of the night sky here lately, and I’ve been trying to set the bar pretty high. I like all the ones I’ve seen, but they have to have something special, something that sets them apart, for me to embed them here.
This one does just that. Earlier this month, photographer Terje Sorgjerd went to Mt. Teide in the Canary Islands to photograph the sky. He was upset when a Saharan sandstorm blew across the sky, ruining his video… or so he thought. What really happened was magic. Pay attention 30 seconds in to see the stunning results*:
Simply breathtaking. The dust blows overhead, glowing golden as it’s illuminated from below by city lights, while above and beyond the Milky Way itself ponderously looms into view.
As the galaxy shows itself, look at the dark lane bisecting it. Feathery and ethereal, those dark fingers and tendrils are actually vast complexes of dust, long chains of carbon-based molecules floating in between the stars. Created when stars are born, age, and die, this dust litters the plane of the galaxy. Seen edge-on, it absorbs and blocks the light from stars behind it, creating the dark fog cutting across the breadth of our spiral galaxy.
There’s a poetry here; dust from a local storm blowing a few kilometers above, but translucent enough to allow us to see beyond it to a different kind of dust blowing among the stars.
Tip o’ the lens cap to Terje himself, who posts on reddit.
* If the embed or link doesn’t work for you, Terje also uploaded it to YouTube. Make sure you set the resolution to 720p to get the full experience!
Related posts:
- Stunning winter sky timelapse video: Sub Zero
- OK, because I like y’all: bonus aurora timelapse video
- Sidereal Motion
- Amazing wide-angle time lapse night sky video
- AWESOME timelapse video: Rapture
April 17th, 2011 at 7:38 am
Fantastic!
I saw this video the other day and wondered what on Earth could cause that glow.
Had I considered that which lies beyond the Earth, dust, then I perhaps I’d know!
(Sorry for the impromptu rhyme.)
April 17th, 2011 at 7:55 am
Beautiful. Thankyou Terje Sorgjerd & the BA.
Now if only Terje had captured the zodiacal light ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiacal_light ) – the dust of shattered asteroids and evapourated comets inside our our solar system – there as well. He could have had a hattrick of dust varieties – inside Earth’s atmosphere, interplanetary & intergalactic!
For those who are curious here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teide
is a link to the wikipage for Mt Teide whilst the name may also ring a bell because of this object :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teide_1
the first verified brown dwarf – and one located in the Plieades, Messier 45, star cluster.
April 17th, 2011 at 8:00 am
video doesnt work for me
April 17th, 2011 at 9:05 am
Love those rolling wave/clouds!
April 17th, 2011 at 9:34 am
That is absolutely amazing! The clouds rolling look like ocean waves!
April 17th, 2011 at 9:36 am
Unfortunately I rarely get to appreciate these videos. They all seem to be powered by Vimeo, and Vimeo sucks, at least for computers more than a few years old.
April 17th, 2011 at 9:51 am
Sebastian, Adrian: I provided a link to the YouTube version in the footnote.
April 17th, 2011 at 9:51 am
2. Messier Tidy Upper
“the first verified brown dwarf – and one located in the Plieades, Messier 45, star cluster. ”
Cool, eh?
,,,and it’s only hot enough to fuse lithium,,,which may be one of the reactions we should be aiming for.
Gary 7
April 17th, 2011 at 9:57 am
“Some kind of celestial event. No – no words. No words to describe it. Poetry! They Should Have Sent A Poet. So beautiful. So beautiful… I had no idea.”
April 17th, 2011 at 10:03 am
Its always nice to switch reference frames once in a while and be reminded of the spinning globe on which we all live.
April 17th, 2011 at 1:44 pm
Next time someone pulls out that tired old falsehood that scientists leach the beauty and art out of the natural world, I’ll give him a list of links where Phil has waxed poetical on how appreciation is enhanced by understanding, and beauty magnified by knowledge.
April 17th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
I also like how he was able to (slowly) pan along the landscapes while the clouds more rapidly slide by and the rotation of the sky smoothly turns, all at seemingly different speeds.
April 17th, 2011 at 3:15 pm
I can’t find words to describe the beauty of those images.
April 17th, 2011 at 3:17 pm
sorry phil but if it doesn’t give me another chance to make an ass of myself i don’t want to know about it
April 17th, 2011 at 3:41 pm
@YouTube video:
“This video contains content from UMG. It is not available in your country. “
April 17th, 2011 at 4:34 pm
Just … wow.
April 17th, 2011 at 4:49 pm
I like the way the clouds/fog look like surf on a shore at about 45 seconds in.
April 17th, 2011 at 5:06 pm
[...] Thanks, Bad Astronomy, for tweeting and posting this video. It’s beautiful. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/04/17/dust-from-the-desert-below-to-the-galaxy-a... [...]
April 17th, 2011 at 5:16 pm
I wish my perfect shots were as good as Terje’s “ruined” shots.
April 17th, 2011 at 7:46 pm
I just found out you can pre-order the first Bad Universe DVD at http://store.discovery.com/detail.php?p=294461. I don’t have convenient access to the Discovery Channel, so this is great for me.
April 17th, 2011 at 8:07 pm
These are incredible. I have tried doing some timelapse myself in the past and it is no where near as great as this. I imagine he has to has some kind of rig to move the camera at a very smooth, but slow rate to combine the timelapse and camera motion.
April 17th, 2011 at 8:49 pm
chip @12,
the moving foreground actually makes these videos unwatchable for me. i find it extremely irritating, and it detracts from the experience of watching the time-lapse in the sky.
April 17th, 2011 at 8:55 pm
This video is everything beautiful and awesome about the world we live in. Sometimes you need to slow down (speed up?) in order to appreciate what we have.
April 17th, 2011 at 9:53 pm
The art exhibitions of the 21rst century wont feature paintings like piccaso, but giant pc screens playing videos like this. Amazing work, thank you for posting it!
astonishing!
April 17th, 2011 at 11:11 pm
@8. Gary Ansorge :
Well, relatively so – at one thousand six hundred degrees Kelvin its freezing cold for a star but still scalding hot for a gas giant planet!
Yes. If you mean developing better forms of nuclear power as our main energy source – definitely. Thorium reactors and Hydrogen fusion if it can work well enough seem like good paths to follow.
April 18th, 2011 at 3:10 am
Stunning time lapse. Thank you for posting.
April 18th, 2011 at 6:23 am
[...] Bad Astronomy, a beautiful set of time lapse images of the sky. One of the things I miss the most living near a city is the reduced amount of stars I [...]
April 18th, 2011 at 8:33 am
Beautiful. Good job Terje.
April 18th, 2011 at 3:31 pm
Makes me hate light pollution. I counted 23 stars last night from where I live
Sad I can count them.
April 19th, 2011 at 2:06 am
“Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in. ”
The first thing that comes to mind…
April 19th, 2011 at 7:00 am
people who make a big deal about the distinction between “life” and nonlife, I contend that the universe itself is alive and biology is nothing but one particular manifestation of this life, and you can see this universe living and breathing so to speak
April 19th, 2011 at 9:43 pm
[...] beyond the dust from the storm lies the dust of the Milky Way itself. Phil Plait explains: As the galaxy shows itself, look at the dark lane bisecting it. Feathery and ethereal, those dark [...]
July 8th, 2011 at 12:50 pm
This is an amazing video, but I have one question. Does anybody know the name of the song that is being played?
Thanks