A new film has pushed that philosophy to the limit by creating what it is like to fly by Saturn – using actual images. All the images in the film were taken with the wide-angle camera on the Cassini-Huygens robotic spacecraft mission, a co-operative project bewteen Nasa, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
Seeing as no man has ever flown past Saturn, the obvious question is just how was it done?
Stephen Van Vuuren, an effects artist and cinematographer, overcame this obstacle by stitching together hundreds of thousands of images of the ringed planet taken by Nasa orbiter Cassini.
The result is a seamless journey that is spectacular in its originality and otherworldliness, perhaps even rivalling the majesty of Stanley Kubrick’s timeless 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The travelogue takes viewers past Saturn itself and one of its moons before whizzing through the planet’s rings.
Mr Van Vuuren plans for his film – Outside In, which he is still making – to be screened on giant IMAX screens.
The silent film is accompanied by music and is described by its creator as akin to an art installation that combines ‘non-narrative visual poetry and science documentary into a rich experience for audiences’.
Saturn is the second biggest planet in our Solar System and takes up the same space as around 833 Earths.
Classified as a gas giant the planet has sixty-one known moons.
Astronomers have been baffled by Saturn’s rings ever since they were discovered by Galileo in 1610.
The rings are each composed of billions of ice and rock particles, which range from being as small as a grain of sugar to as large as a house.
Outside In is a non-profit film financed by donations, which can be made at www.outsideinthemovie.com.
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