Take a Journey to the Edge of the Universe

Do you ever wonder what’s beyond the starry sky? Even if you had the money to hire your own space shuttle, there’s a limit to what you could witness first-hand thanks to temperatures, extreme pressure and volatile atmospheric conditions. But none of that is stopping the folks at National Geographic. They’ve put together a special that takes you as close as you’re ever going to get to our neighboring planets and beyond.

Journey to the Edge of the Universe uses tightly-plotted computer animation to take you on a wild ride through the galaxy.  I’ll let them tell it:

In one single, epic camera move we journey from two people studying the night sky, accelerate up through the atmosphere, past the moon and neighboring planets, and out of our solar system, to the stars, galaxies and beyond. Traveling all the way to the edge of the universe itself, NGC goes on a breathtaking grand tour of the cosmos, to explore newborn stars, distant planets, black holes and galaxies beyond.  With the help of the world’s largest telescope and cinema-quality CGI, we’ll journey to the edge of time to visualize the powers that forge and constantly renew the universe.

On the Web site, you can also view some of the stunning images from Journey to the Edge of the Universe and take a 3-D, virtual tour of the cosmos.

As beautiful as these animations are, they don’t simply come from the imagination of the animators. Every frame of this film was created using actual assets from NASA and the Hubble Telescope. Every effort was made to make this Journey to the Edge of the Universe as real and detailed as possible.

The special premieres on the National Geographic Channel on Sunday, December 7 at 8pm.

In the meantime, here’s director Yavar Abbas describing the work that went into creating this fascinating look at the universe.

(Photos and video courtesy of National Geographic.)