This Stacked ISS Timelapse Turns Earth Into a Trippy Laser Show

There are a million and one International Space Station flyover videos, and while they’re all cool, I was under the assumption that the whole genre had been pretty much exhausted. But this one by Cristoph Malin blows everything else away. It’s not video in the traditional sense. Instead, Malin stacked photos taken by astronauts on the ISS to draw with lights on Earth; as the ISS spins around the planet, a single point of light on the ground moves over time to create a line. Put together as a whole, it’s a rather incredible effect.

Malin explained a bit more how he did it in the video’s description, so you can get an idea of how to do it yourself:

These “stacks” create the Star Trails, but furthermore make interesting patterns visible. For example lightning corridors within clouds, but they also show occasional satellite tracks (or Iridium Flashes) as well as meteors – patterns that interrupt the main Star Trails, and thus are immediately visible.

The many oversaturated hot pixels in some of the scenes are the inevitable result of ultrahigh ISO settings the Nikon D3s in ISS-use are pushed to for keeping exposure times short by all means (owed to the dramatic speed the ISS travels). As there are no dark frames or RAW data currently available, hot pixels are not easy to remove.

After the initial stacking, all images have been sequenced with Apple Motion and the Video cut and edited with Final Cut Pro X. Stacking done with StarStaX, get it here.

Malin said it gave him a real Tron vibe, and I can’t say I disagree. It’s curious that as digital photography gets ever more advanced, it’s becoming more and more possible to emulate the aesthetics of the retrofuture. CGI is replacing photography in some cases, yes, but when you compare the early days of digital to something like this, it’s impressive to see how the incredible processing tools now available can help photos encroach on CGI’s territory as well. So cry “Photoshop!!!” all you want, but don’t say that this thing didn’t trip you out.

Hat tip to Nikon Rumors for the video.