Time-lapse videos of the night sky with the stars rushing around the Earth are always fascinating to watch, but filmmaker Lance Page has a new take on filming the night sky. His short film entitled “Ride the Sky” depicts the Earth turning while the stars stand still.

Using a motorized pivot for his camera, he trained the lens on the north star. From our vantage point on Earth we usually see the stars gliding across the sky throughout the night while we appear to stay stationary. Page’s short film shows our planet’s perpetual rotation in contrast with the stars holding their relative positions.

The video is a fascinating new perspective on a familiar sight. Though we know logically that the Earth is not the center of the universe, it’s easy to believe that everything really does revolve around us. “Ride the Sky” is a beautiful reminder that we are simply another piece in the vast puzzle that makes up our cosmic neighborhood.

The post Spellbinding Film Shows Earth Rotating as Stars Stay Still first appeared on Gajitz.

Sea life is fascinating, but we rarely get to see the incredibly slow-moving life of coral, sponges, underwater fungi and other seemingly motionless creatures. Daniel Stoupin, a University of Queensland PhD student, wanted to raise global awareness of environmental threats to marine life, and he accomplished this in a shockingly beautiful way.

Using time-lapse photography, Stoupin shot more than 150,000 underwater photographs. He then turned these photos into a mesmerizing, hypnotic video that speeds up the pace of these underwater creatures to a pace that we fast-moving humans can relate to. The result is simply some of the most beautiful images we’ve ever seen of underwater life. Stoupin explains his goals and the feeling behind the clip on his blog.

This creatures in this clip seem utterly unearthly, as though Stoupin was somehow able to film alien life blossoming and moving. As creatures with relatively short lifespans, we humans tend to view slow-moving organisms as non-living. Stoupin points out that, at this time-lapse pace, humans could watch mountains rise and fall. Our own lives are simply a moment in the lives of these exceptionally slow-moving creatures. This incredible video makes it possible for us to see a world that is typically hidden from us due both to location and time.

The post Incredible Time Lapse Video Shows Hidden Underwater Lives first appeared on Gajitz.

There’s no doubt that as our astronomical observation equipment has gotten more advanced and powerful, we’ve been making new discoveries at a startlingly fast rate. But it’s hard to really picture just how many of those discoveries have been made in the last, say, 30 years without some type of visual aid. Scott Manley recognized this problem and set to work creating one of the most truly breathtaking science videos we’ve ever seen. It uses data from the Minor Planet Center and the Lowell Observatory to map out every asteroid discovery from 1980 to 2010.

The video shows in sparkling detail how many asteroids have been were discovered in a 30-year period in the order they were discovered. All the while, the solar system just keeps chugging along. It is fascinating to see discovery patterns emerge, especially near the end of the video where there is a very clear and unusual pattern. The newly-discovered asteroids also seem to be further and further away from Earth as the years progress, which can be attributed to newer and more powerful telescopes being used to spot the minor planets.

The post Space in Time: Time-Lapse Vid Shows 30 Years of Asteroids first appeared on Gajitz.