Starship Asterisk*

Visual Effects: Wonders of the Universe

Explanation: What visual effects are depicted in this video? The effects were created by BDH for the BBC television show Wonders of the Universe, but are unlabeled on the above version posted to Vimeo. Even so, some stills in the video are easily identified, such as the Hubble image of the Carina Nebula that occurs at about 2:22, the Crab Nebula at about 7:45, and the Cat's Eye Nebula that occurs at about 8:16. A pan away from a spiral galaxy occurs at about 4:00, and breathtaking vistas of the spiral occur until past 5:00. Pulsars and supernovas seem to take over at about 9:00 and are truly spectacular. Binary star systems containing a pulsar and an accretion disk occur beginning at about 14:30. Past that, the entire computer animated video seems to sparkle with unknown stars, unknown planets, and sequences where unknown gas is flowing toward unknown places. What, for example, is being depicted at 13:00? Please help create a companion explanation for the video by contributing to APOD's discussion page.

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What for example, is easy. It is group participation in lack of precipitation.

At 13:00 The ignition of a black hole after a nova Blowoff.
R Spehn

What's with the bizarre image for the APOD wallpaper whenever the APOD is a video?

Today's APOD wallpaper seems to be a picture of a bunch of ballet dancers. The last time APOD was a video the wallpaper was a picture of a cat staring at a goldfish.

What's wrong with using some Hubble image as the default APOD wallpaper?

At 2:35, for 14 seconds, it is the satellite view at night of continental Europe.
At 13:00, it depicts the death of our own star, the Sun, in years to come.
The whole video shows only things that can be seen at the milky way galaxy and its neighboring Magelanic cloud. This is only a small part of the Wonders within the universe, which a human like us cannot interpret how these things happen. Probably its easy to believe that SOMEONE out there engineered the whole universe.

Startling film with careful alignment of image with sound track. Play the video at church and ask whether it inspires an understanding of how small we are relative to the universe. Yes we have some skills in naming things and then analyzing how they work but the stark extent of what we see & imagine is displayed in this art work. This is an apod for a Sunday night and helps explain man's venture to even the nearby Mars will be an epic accomplishment.

At 13:00 we see a rainbow in progress.

At 13:00 looks like a star collapsing into a black hole.

Over orchestrated rubbish.
Everything is explicable IF there are no false premises in the underlying assumptions.
For the video I would just ask Dr Who.

Haunting, Beautiful and amazing... The images almost seem to be sped up to a speed that allows us to view beyond our miniscule life span and observe the different phenomena that has transpired in our universe from the beginning of time. Engaging, frightening, awe inspiring. We have NO IDEA what lies beyond the fragile safety of our atmosphere.....

It is a beautiful vimeo. It was produced to give people a "feeling" for the universe, and it succeeds at doing that. Therefore it is undoubtedly a worthy APOD.

For myself, I always want to be told about the "specifics" when it comes to images of the universe. For myself, I don't ask for images of the "general".

A few years ago I saw an image looking like this:



The caption said that it was "a galaxy". Wow, how helpful. I had to search and search until I managed to identify the galaxy as NGC 5371.

But some people probably prefer to just contemplate the perfect spiral form of NGC 5371. They'd rather do that than being told that this is a galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici, that it is classified as an SBbc spiral, and that the Principal Galaxy Catalog thinks that it is a really big and majestic galaxy, around a hundred million light-years away and about four times as bright as the Milky Way.

Personally I always want to be told about the details, the specifics. But not all people feel like that. Today's APOD was made for those who just want to be carried away by the images, the music and the feeling.

Ann

They managed to film superman's planet, krypton at 3:28 !! :p The pictures are nice even if I think the twinkles, flashes and dramatic music are a bit exaggerate

stunning visuals and music synthesis that create a feeling of floating expansion.

The planet at 3:15 is our own earth; you can easily distinguish North- and South America — if you tilt your head — so the star at the background is our sun. Therefore the panning away from "a" galaxy at 4:00 is our own milky way. The earth-sequence begins at 2:30 above France.

This epic of the universe video was a great show case of the universe.
These gentlemen deserve a great praise for this video. Thanks.
God's work is beyond the human thought.
Robert Lee Grisham/The Hammer And Nail./04/18/11

This video is electrifying. The visuals depicted facilitates imagining the universe as a big brain.
Indeed passing the test of intelligence and creativity as what is observed at 13 is plasma representing the bloodline of life throughout.

Maybe its art and needs no detailed explaination but just to be enjoyed...it was that, enjoyable eye candy

At 13:00, the equilibrium between outward radiation and inward gravity/mass give way to stellar collapse into a supernova.

Wondrous! I absolutely enjoyed every minute of it.

That said, I agree with some of the above that it would have been even better if it was labeled.
There is so much there that makes me question - What is it?

The ending certainly did look like a sun being pulled in by a black hole, but where? when?

So frustrating to try to watch this on an old country dialup connection. I'll have to go into town today to the library to view this on one of their computers.

Tex wrote:What's with the bizarre image for the APOD wallpaper whenever the APOD is a video?

Today's APOD wallpaper seems to be a picture of a bunch of ballet dancers. The last time APOD was a video the wallpaper was a picture of a cat staring at a goldfish.

What's wrong with using some Hubble image as the default APOD wallpaper?

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php? ... 20#p146820

While this video is pretty amazing as far as 'simulations' go, I agree with another poster when they said (paraphrased): details! We want details. It would be even better to know what some of the things are that are being shown. Captions would be a great addition.

On the other hand, I guess it doesn't hurt to get rather lost in the pretty pictures and the music for a bit, so I'll give it an 8 out of 10.

All I can see is a white screen. It looks like a polar bear sitting on an ice flue during a blizzard, same as the last time there was a video.

One minute into this video I got bored and turned it off. And the "music" was awful.
I prefer (I love) the daily APOD pictures accompanied by explanation.

Great, I, for one, loved it! I'd like to mention a nice touch that we don't usually see in such vids: They made it look like we were seeing this through the eye of a real camera lens flying through space. They made it look like so by adding fake dust specs on the lens and fake light refractions from the lens. Realism!