A new image by New Zealand astrophotographer Brendan Larsen has received its fair share of AI accusations. But while it looks a bit too cool to be true, the work is very much the result of human talent and creativity.
As The Guardian reports, getting the final shot required collecting 578 individual snaps over the course of more than two hours during a September evening. Afterward, Larsen painstakingly stitched together the photos to reveal the sheer volume of satellites now in Earth’s orbit.
Larsen layered the images on top of each other in Photoshop, carefully removing the stars so only the light from the satellite trails remained. He estimates it took him around 45 hours in total, with some 25 or so satellites present in each picture. “I could start to see the pattern emerging and realized: ‘Wow, this looks really awesome,’” Larsen told The Guardian. “I knew if I carried on it would look even better and more impressive in terms of satellite numbers.”
The final photo contains 14,000 different satellite trails from around 1,400 different satellites—a mix of instruments for tracking weather, enabling internet communications, and running navigation protocols all jostling for room up in space.
Part of the motivation for putting together the image was to raise awareness of how cluttered the closest parts of space have become, and the importance of efforts to protect the night sky from light pollution as well as space debris.
Larsen captured the shot—via a Canon EOS R with a Sigma Art 50mm f/1.4 lens and an exposure length of 8 seconds—on September 9th, using the imposing Mount Taranaki as the foreground. There’s a light trail squiggle close to the center of the mountain, which is actually two mountaineers making their way down from the summit, with their movement captured in the same way as the satellites overhead.
Larsen has also uploaded a video of how the image was assembled, to dismiss claims of AI trickery. Unfortunately, filling up the environment with all of our junk is far too human of an impulse.
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Lead Image: Brendan Larsen / Instagram
