Ultra-HD footage shows off the pyramids and Burj Khalifa from space

Three new ultra high-definition videos taken by a camera attached to the outside of the International Space Station show the eerie beauty of cities from above.

Urthecast’s Iris camera mounted to the outside of the Space Station took the newly released videos of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt and Cape Town, South Africa in 2015.

Iris is powerful enough to capture cars driving on roads and waves breaking on a coastline. The camera can’t pick out individual people, but it's able to get shots of crowds all from about 220 miles above Earth’s surface.

In all, the orbit of the Space Station allows the camera to capture video of the Earth “between ±52º north and south — an area of the planet in which ~95% of the human population lives,” according to Urthecast.

Companies and even private individuals can use high-definition videos like these to gather data they might not be able to compile through more Earth-tethered means.

Via Giphy

By looking down from high above, scientists can track things like deforestation and even produce traffic models, Urthecast has said.

“The video imagery is just so stunning that we are finding documentary filmmakers and the emerging VR market, for instance, are taking the content in directions that are uncharted for what is really a geospatial product at heart,” Urthecast senior production manager Christos Koulas told Mashable.

These videos aren’t beamed down from the Space Station in this form. A fair amount of post-processing has to go into making the images look as good as they do.

Urthecast created programs that negate the movement on the Space Station, which can affect the look of the videos. The company even needs to account for the movements of the crew members on the orbiting outpost because small tremors can shake the exact pointing of the zoomed-in camera.

But it isn’t necessarily a perfect fix. Tall structures in the videos -- like the Burj Khalifa and the pyramids -- appear to sway in the clips because of the positioning of the instrument, not because the objects themselves are moving that dramatically.

Urthecast released videos of London, Barcelona and Boston in 2015 as well.

“We don't have formal plans yet for further free releases, but we’ve certainly thought about releasing a few videos from our archive for free every now and then,” Koulas said. 

“We’re incredibly happy with the impact this is having. It’s particularly exciting to hear and see everyone’s reaction to the quality and utility of this type of content."

You can download the ultra-HD videos for yourself directly through Urthecast. 

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