200,000 Images of Saturn Form Beautiful Stop-Motion Film

What's This?

By Dhiya Kuriakose2013-07-25 21:44:28 UTC

On July 19, NASA's Cassini mission took pictures of Earth from 900 million miles away. The full Saturn mosaic will take weeks to process, but while we're waiting, filmmaker Fabio di Donato created a Saturn mosaic of his own for our viewing pleasure.

Donato sorted through 200,000 still photographs of Saturn taken by Cassini between 2004 and 2012, ordered them and set them to music.

See also: Celebrate Earth Day With These 10 Spectacular Time-Lapse Videos

The video above makes it easy to believe you're watching the rings and planets dancing among the stars, quite literally. The black and white tones almost make it feel as though you're watching a 1960s movie.

According to his Vimeo post, Donato dedicated the video to the memory of Margherita Hack, an astrophysicist and popular science writer who passed away earlier this year. "She made me love the stars," Donato wrote.

The images used in the video are available at the Planetary Data System for public use.

It's a rare occurrence for the world to see visual proof of the brilliance of the rest of the universe — but this is one of those times.

Homepage image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Topics: Cassini, saturn, space, stop motion, US & World, Video, World