German filmmaker Felix Dierich uses several years of public data from the Japanese weather satellite Himawari-8 to render this haunting timelapse of Earth seen from space.
Couple with this lovely animation of Carl Sagan’s famous Pale Blue Dot monologue. (“That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.”)
via Aeon
For a moment of sheer cosmic and earthly awe: This might look like a surrealist painting, but it’s a 270-image composite taken over two hours in Indonesia, including the erupting Mount Semeru, star trails in the sky, and a meteor streaking across on the right.
With a sight like this, how is one not to contemplate our longing for permanence and agree with Carl Sagan that nature is the greatest source of spirituality?
Pure cosmic awe: A multiple-camera, 360-degree timelapse planetary panorama of the night sky by photographer Vincent Brady, with original score by musician Brandon McCoy.
Perhaps this is the “sense of reverence and awe” that Carl Sagan extolled as his religion.
For those of us who missed the magic, or simply want to relive it, a magnificent timelapse of the cherry blossom festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Pair with the humbling The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossoms.
For your daily “oh, amazing world!” moment: Magnificent timelapse of a spider weaving its web.
(via The Kid Should See This)
Pure breath-stopping awe: Russian filmmaker Vyacheslav Ivanov spent patient hours capturing the formation of a snowflake under a microscope – this resulting timelapse is a 100% real record of the process, not digitally animated.
If this doesn’t give you yugen, don’t now what will.
Pair with a the science of how snowflakes get their shape and a scientific explanation of how snow actually works.
(via The Kid Should See This)
In May of 2013, Tyler Fox was dropped off in Campo, California at the US/Mexico border. For the next four and a half months, he walked the 2,600-mile Pacific Crest Trail across California, Oregon, and Washington to finish in Manning Park, British Columbia. This is what he saw.
For a very different yet equally enchanting take on the PCT, see Cheryl Strayed’s remarkable Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.
Dennis Hlynsky, a professor at RISD, illuminates the invisible whimsy of nature with his breathtaking AfterEffects-enhanced timelapse videos of bird flight patterns.
Mesmerizing timelapse of LA’s infrastructure in motion. Pretty, sure, but let’s not forget what makes a great city…
Mental health break: Adrift, “a love letter to the fog of San Francisco” by photographer Simon Christen, two years in the making.
Mesmerizing timelapse of the Curiosity rover’s mission to Mars between its landing on August 8, 2012 and May 21, 2013. Carl Sagan, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke would’ve loved it.
Pair with this lovely visual love letter to Curiosity.
62 years of climate change in 13 seconds – remarkable, chilling timelapse of NASA meteorological data on global temperature rises.
What the night sky will look like over the next 7 billion years, in 19 seconds.
60 seconds of awe in this timelapse of the Australian solar eclipse by photographer Colin Legg.
A breathtaking nighttime tour of Earth narrated by NASA scientist Justin Wilkinson. So that’s what Ptolemy was talking about, then.