This is an entry I’ve been meaning to write for ages. Sometime a while back I stumbled upon a website for a Science/Art project called “A History of the Sky” by a guy called Ken Murphy. This project sets out to record the history of the sky as viewed from a fixed vantage point using a time-lapse camera. The camera films the sky each day taking a picture every 10 seconds and then the film from each day is displayed side by side on a big screen producing a mosaic-like effect in which each block of the screen is a day’s worth of sky change. The aim is to put screens in public arenas and, ultimately to show the full year in one go. It’s perhaps hard to get a real grasp of what this ends up looking like but you can read more about the project at its website which also include examples of a 42 day preview movies and a 126 day version which is also available to view in better quality directly on youtube (watch in full screen mode). The 126 day version is particularly good because it is a long enough period to be able to see the seasonal change in sunrise and sunset times between the earlier and later days in the sequence. I also really like the way that you can see the pinky/purple tinge of sunset enter each image just before the end of daylight and the image dropping out to black.
Personally, I think there is only one word to describe this piece of work and that (much over-used) word is “awesome”.
Tim O'Hare 