ORBIT compiled by Seán Doran is a wonderfully poetic “out of the world” representation of global patterns based on observations from the International Space Station. The film leverages NASA’s Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth program.
NatureDocumentaries.org always endorses the motto “Science can be beautiful and art can be informative”. The International Space Station experiences on average 16 sunrises in a typical 24 hour period. It circles the Earth in between 92-93 minutes. You can learn more about the travel direction and diurnal orbital positions of the spacecraft from here. Albeit, at a lower resolution, you can watch and receive regular live feed from a number of cameras installed outside of the ISS (see the embedded feed below).
Live streaming video by Ustream
The perceived slow pace of the documentary allows viewers time to pay attention and notice certain patterns. It is in this regard a successful contribution to the “slow TV” genre. Observations include deserts, mountains, coastlines that we are familiar from maps, striking cloud formations including the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) band with characteristic columns of doldrums forming anvil shapes, high albedo areas with cloud and snow cover, nighttime views dominated with urban centers with a strong reminder of Anthropocene, tropospheric weather events and polar lights. This is a great companion production to watch after documentaries that detail global patterns such as Earth from Space – PBS (2013).
One sad thing is that the footage unfortunately mostly focuses on East Africa, Asia and Pacific ocean most probably due to lack of continuous frames from other parts of the world. The filmmaker has also released an “uncut” version of the ISS observations.
0 Comments
You can be the first one to leave a comment.