Most people will only get to see the splendor of outer space through Star Trek or our computer screens, and with the final launch of Atlantis the number of people who see the real thing will diminish. To dull the pain of this reality, new 3D photos of the International Space Station bring us a little close to feeling like we’re seeing the real deal.
Photographs taken by Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli were turned into stereo views after his countryman, astronomer Roberto Beltramini, took pairs of slightly offset images and tweaked them. The transformation process began after high-definition still images and video, showing Endeavour docked to the space station, were captured from the departing Soyuz spacecraft in May. It’s not completely pure 3D but the effect is close enough to add dimensions to the photos, now made available to the public.
His incredible 3D images are perspectives we’ll never see again — not even during Atlantis’s final mission to the space station this month, which is scheduled to begin on Friday. It was by pure chance that a Soyuz craft happened to be leaving the station while Endeavour was docked, and the circumstance is virtually certain not to be repeated. Mr Nespoli took a series of images while in space, including the Grand Canyon, a swollen Mississippi river and Britain.
During his mission he said: ‘When I have free time, even only five minutes, I just hover in the International Space Station looking down out of one of the seven windows. ‘Earth is a beautiful subject and one of the most magnificent models that a photographer can have.’
Source: Daily Mail
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