Universe (Notre univers) is a 1960 black-and-white documentary short film narrated by Douglas Rain and made in 1960 by Roman Kroitor and Colin Low for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). The NFB writes: "[The film] creates on the screen a vast, awe-inspiring picture of the universe as it would appear to a voyager through space. Realistic animation takes you into far regions of space, beyond the reach of the strongest telescope, past Moon, Sun, and Milky Way into galaxies yet unfathomed."
This visualization is grounded in the nightly work of Dr. Donald MacRae, an astronomer at the David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill, Ontario] Using the technology of his era, MacRae prepares his largely manually-operated equipment and then photographs, by long exposure, one star.
Influence on 2001: A Space Odyssey
After Universe was released, Colin Low worked with Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick chose narrator Douglas Rain as the voice of the HAL 9000 computer and hired cinematographer Wally Gentleman, who did optical effects for Universe, to work on 2001.
Source: Wikipedia
This visualization is grounded in the nightly work of Dr. Donald MacRae, an astronomer at the David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill, Ontario] Using the technology of his era, MacRae prepares his largely manually-operated equipment and then photographs, by long exposure, one star.
Influence on 2001: A Space Odyssey
After Universe was released, Colin Low worked with Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick chose narrator Douglas Rain as the voice of the HAL 9000 computer and hired cinematographer Wally Gentleman, who did optical effects for Universe, to work on 2001.
Source: Wikipedia
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Short filmTranscript
00:00♪♪
00:10♪♪
00:20♪♪
00:30♪♪
00:40♪♪
00:50♪♪
01:00The ground beneath our feet is the surface of a planet
01:05whirling at thousands of miles an hour around a distant sun.
01:11Our life is possible only because of the light and warmth of that sun, a star.
01:18Yet the sun which shines on us is only one out of billions of such stars in the universe.
01:25♪♪
01:41This is one of the world's major observatories,
01:44the David Dunlap Observatory, 15 miles north of Toronto.
01:49Dr. Donald McRae is a professor of astronomy at the University of Toronto.
01:53♪♪
01:58Observatory.
02:00At any moment scattered throughout the world, there are hundreds of men and women
02:03observing the heavens with optical and radio telescopes,
02:07gathering data for the solution of many questions about the universe.
02:11Routine work for the most part.
02:14McRae's job tonight, if the sky remains clear,
02:17is to take photographs of six stars with the telescope.
02:20♪♪
02:44A mirror over six feet in diameter, with its surface shaped to within one millionth of an inch,
02:50will catch the light from a star.
02:57This light will be reflected from the large mirror onto a smaller one,
03:01which in turn will focus it back into a camera at the base of the telescope.
03:05♪♪
03:28Out of the study of hundreds of thousands of observations,
03:31astronomers have pieced together an accurate picture of the universe.
03:35♪♪
03:57Beyond the appearance of starshine and moonbeam,
04:02what will the first men to leave the Earth find?
04:06Enough is now known that we can, in imagination, journey into these spaces.
04:12♪♪
04:26250,000 miles away, the moon.
04:31This is the moon that men have worshipped as a goddess,
04:35that countless lovers have sighed over and sworn by.
04:39♪♪
04:46It will take immense courage to journey to this place,
04:50for on this pitted and pocked ball of pumice and stone,
04:54there is no atmosphere, no air to breathe, no sound to hear.
05:00♪♪
05:08By day, the sun's heat would boil water, if there were water.
05:14At night, 240 degrees below zero.
05:19♪♪
05:28Unshielded, a man couldn't live here for two minutes.
05:31But if he were to die, his body would lie unchanged through thousands of years,
05:37for nothing grows and nothing decays.
05:42♪♪
05:47If you were to hover in space beyond the moon,
05:50speeding up in imagination its movement,
05:53you would see a majestic procession in the sky.
05:57As the moon circles the Earth, so the Earth itself circles the sun.
06:03♪♪
06:17The sun is the center of a system of nine heavenly bodies,
06:21called planets, which wheel around it in vast orbits,
06:25trapped by its gravitational pull.
06:28Closest to it, the tiny planet, Mercury.
06:32♪♪
06:37On the surface of Mercury, the temperature is hot enough to melt lead.
06:41For one face of it is turned perpetually to the sun, only 36 million miles away.
06:46♪♪
06:57If we looked outward from Mercury,
06:59we would see the second closest planet, Venus,
07:02shining brighter than the much more distant stars.
07:06Venus, in orbit 31 million miles further out from the sun, is a mystery,
07:12for its face is veiled by dust storms, or perhaps dense cloud.
07:18♪♪
07:22Looking outward from Venus,
07:24the most brilliant and beautiful object in the sky
07:27would be a planet in orbit 25 million miles still further out, Earth.
07:33♪♪
07:48Beyond Earth, shining readily in the night, Mars.
07:53Colder than Earth and smaller,
07:56this is the planet men have looked on
07:58and wondered whether they are alone in the heavens.
08:02♪♪
08:05It is reasonably certain that the markings on its surface,
08:08bluish green in the Martian summer,
08:11turning rusty brown in the autumn, indicate vegetation.
08:15♪♪
08:20Here, however, the atmosphere has almost no oxygen
08:24and no creatures like men could live here,
08:27140 million miles from the sun.
08:30♪♪
08:37♪♪
08:44In the place past Mars, where there should theoretically be a planet,
08:48there are only the asteroids,
08:51small bodies ranging from boulders to chunks 300 miles across,
08:57hundreds of them swinging in orbit about the sun.
09:01♪♪
09:24500 million miles out from the sun, the giant planet Jupiter,
09:28ruling 12 moons.
09:31♪♪
09:37Jupiter, seen here from one of its moons,
09:40is larger than all the other planets put together.
09:44Its atmosphere is 1,000 miles deep,
09:47a poisonous mixture of methane gas, ammonia, and hydrogen,
09:52which at the bottom must have the density of water.
09:55♪♪
10:01Here, under the enormous pressure of the atmosphere,
10:04a human being would be crushed beyond recognition.
10:11♪♪
10:17These are the rings of Saturn, bands 10,000 miles wide,
10:22composed of almost an infinity of meteoric particles of gravel and ice
10:27circling the sixth planet.
10:30♪♪
10:34Saturn, with its nine moons,
10:36is so far from the sun that it takes 30 Earth years to circle it,
10:41and here the temperature never rises above 240 degrees below zero.
10:46♪♪
10:51And if we were to plunge still further out,
10:54hundreds of millions of miles past the planet Uranus,
10:59beyond Neptune,
11:01we would finally come to the last of the known planets,
11:06to the dwarf Pluto, named for the god of the underworld.
11:11♪♪
11:14Its surface moves in perpetual darkness and unimaginable cold,
11:20for the sun is four billion miles away,
11:23only a starry speck in the sky.
11:26♪♪
11:55Sometimes a strange apparition appears in the sky, a comet.
12:00♪♪
12:03Like a planet, a comet orbits the sun,
12:07but it is only a loose conglomeration of ice and dust, invisible,
12:13until its head comes close enough to the sun,
12:16whose rays then excited into fluorescence
12:19and push away from the head a vaporous tail,
12:22which may become a million miles long.
12:25♪♪
12:37For a few weeks, a comet blossoms,
12:40and then passing the sun,
12:42it will fade and coast again, unseen,
12:46billions of miles into the darkness,
12:49perhaps not to return for a century to the blazing star,
12:52which is its master.
12:54♪♪
12:59♪♪
13:06The sun is an unimaginable inferno,
13:09a thermonuclear furnace churning with the storms we see as sunspots,
13:14heaving from its surface columns of gas
13:17that arch 300,000 miles into space,
13:20pulled and twisted by enormous electrical and magnetic fields.
13:24♪♪
13:40The sun produces the energy of a million hydrogen bombs
13:44exploding every second.
13:47So it has raged for five billion years,
13:51and so it will rage for perhaps another five billion years,
13:55flooding its planets with radiant energy.
13:59♪♪
14:14Too near or too far from this furnace, instant death for men.
14:19Between 91 and 93 million miles from this star,
14:23filtered through a blanket of atmosphere,
14:26its energies sustain human life.
14:29♪♪
14:34...were introduced to the audience by Idria Andor,
14:37writer and president of the Yolkastar Planetarium.
14:41♪♪
14:50♪♪
14:56Hey, look at that. Let's try again.
14:59♪♪
15:06♪♪
15:16♪♪
15:31When a particular star is to be photographed,
15:34it is located by its coordinates on a star chart.
15:39On such a chart, every black speck is a star.
15:4414.6.7 plus 13.49.
15:5345 tons of steel and glass must be aimed precisely
15:57at a spot perhaps 200 million billion miles away.
16:02♪♪
16:21Many of the stars astronomers study are invisible to the naked eye.
16:27Even the nearest ones, apart from our sun,
16:30are so far away that their light is very dim.
16:34The mirror in the base of the telescope
16:36gathers and focuses hundreds of thousands of times
16:39the amount of light seen by the naked eye.
16:42♪♪
17:02Almost nothing of a star can be known directly.
17:06It is a photograph that is studied,
17:08not a portrait of a star, but a photograph of its light
17:11split into a spectrum in which each band has its meaning.
17:15The presence in that distant star
17:17of elements like iron, calcium, carbon.
17:21From a spectroscopic photograph,
17:23astronomers can tell whether a star is moving towards us or away
17:27by exposing on the same plate the spectrum of the star
17:31and the spectrum of an iron arc
17:33and measuring the displacement between the two.
17:36♪♪
17:49To photograph the spectrum of the arc takes ten seconds.
17:53To catch enough of the light from the star may take up to two hours.
18:02During the exposure,
18:03machinery in the base of the telescope
18:05automatically compensates for the rotation of the Earth,
18:09keeping the star centered.
18:20♪♪
18:28If we looked more deeply into space,
18:31leaving behind us the Earth and the whole of our solar system
18:36and traveled at the speed of light,
18:39it would take four years before we came to even the closest
18:42of the billions of suns scattered through stellar space.
18:53Although the stars are suns,
18:55many of them are unlike our sun.
18:58♪♪
19:01Some, like Beta in the constellation Lyra,
19:04instead of planets, have a second sun swinging around them.
19:09♪♪
19:18There are multiple suns like Castor in the constellation Gemini.
19:22♪♪
19:31There are giant suns 5,000 times as large as ours
19:35and dwarfs in which one cubic inch of matter weighs 40 tons.
19:45Suns rotating so rapidly that pinwheels of gas are thrown off,
19:49weighing more than our whole system of planets.
19:58♪♪
20:05Suns that over a period of days or hours
20:08pulse as their internal nuclear processes change.
20:14Rare suns in which the temperature reaches 5 billion degrees
20:19where nuclear fusion makes elements as heavy as iron
20:23and results in the enormous explosion of a nova or supernova.
20:27♪♪
20:49The brilliant light from such explosions
20:51floods through the gaseous clouds of space
20:54for billions on billions of miles
20:56and the remains of a supernova recorded 10 centuries ago
21:01can still be seen as the Crab Nebula in the constellation Taurus.
21:06♪♪
21:12As well as stars, in stellar space there is gas and dust,
21:17sometimes glowing in starlight, sometimes dark,
21:21obscuring what is behind them.
21:23♪♪
21:28Stars, gas, dust,
21:32all moving in apparent chaos.
21:35Until a generation ago it seemed indecipherable.
21:39The only suggestion of form was their grouping in the band we know as the Milky Way.
21:45♪♪
21:50Doctor McRae.
21:54HD 3035.
21:56Now years of patient work have revealed a pattern in the universe.
22:00A pattern beyond anything we could have imagined
22:03looking at the heavens with the naked eye.
22:06With data sifted from countless painstaking observations,
22:11astronomers are now filling in the details of a pattern so vast
22:16that everyday ideas of distance and time
22:18cannot encompass it.
22:21♪♪
22:27If we could move with the freedom of a god
22:30so that a million years pass in a second,
22:33and if we went far enough past the nearest suns,
22:38beyond the star clouds and nebulae,
22:41in time they would end.
22:43And as if moving out from behind a curtain,
22:46we would come to an endless sea of night.
22:50♪♪
23:00In that sea are islands, continents of stars
23:04that we have named the galaxies.
23:08The largest known forms in the universe,
23:12hundreds of billions of suns bound together by gravity
23:16rotating around their common center once in 200 million years.
23:22♪♪
23:28Our sun, with its planets,
23:31is near the edge of one such galaxy,
23:34the rim of which we see dimly as the Milky Way.
23:38♪♪
23:43The galaxies are the birthplace and graveyard of the stars.
23:48Here, gas contracts into knots,
23:51becomes hot,
23:53and flares into the life of a sun,
23:56sometimes forming with it planets,
23:59sometimes planets which must be suitable for life.
24:03And here too, the stars finally consume themselves
24:07and collapse into cold, dark dwarfs.
24:10♪♪
24:22A hundred billion suns,
24:25yet forms so enormous
24:28that they have been observed slipping through one another like phantoms,
24:32their stars light years apart,
24:35continuing undisturbed in their courses.
24:37♪♪
24:43At the very limit of our most powerful instruments,
24:47galaxies still are flung across space,
24:51themselves as numerous as stars in the night sky.
24:55♪♪
25:05But when we look this deeply into space,
25:09we are looking at a ghostly image of the distant past,
25:13for the light by which we see these regions
25:16started traveling towards us long before the dawn of life on Earth.
25:21♪♪
25:31In all of time,
25:32on all the planets of all the galaxies in space,
25:36what civilizations have risen,
25:39looked into the night,
25:42seen what we see,
25:45asked the questions that we ask?
25:48♪♪
25:56♪♪
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