Timelapse Earth – 4K Edition (Video)

Timelapse Earth in 4K resolution, as imaged by the geostationary Elektro-L weather satellite, from May 15th to May 19th, 2011.

Elektro-L is located about 40,000 km above the Indian ocean. It orbits at a speed that causes it to remain over the same spot as the Earth rotates.

The satellite creates a 121 megapixel image (11136×11136 pixels) every 30 minutes with visible and infrared light wavelengths. The images were edited to adjust levels and change the infrared channel from orange to green to show vegetation more naturally. The images were resized by 50%, misalignments between frames were manually corrected, and image artifacts that occurred when the camera was facing towards the sun were partially corrected. The images were interpolated by a factor of 20 to create a smooth animation.

Timelapse Earth 1

Timelapse Earth 2

Timelapse Earth 3