Closeup of earth from space

Question

is there anything that that would give the illusion starting in a distant galaxy and traveling through space towards earth. And slowly as you enter earth to start seeing clouds and then have someone focus on top of a mountain? Not sure what this would be call or what type of special effect it would be? Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

The short Eames film "Powers of Ten" has a fantastic one. Acually, a pair of fantastic ones. There's also a nice one in the longer (and more modern) film "Cosmic Voyage."

Answer 2

There isn't one single piece of software that covers the entire scope that you're looking for. I recommend you use a combination of Celestia and Google Earth.

Celestia will let you zoom out to the intergalactic scale, and then zoom back in to the Earth, slowly drawing in details such as stars, planets, and eventually the surface of the Earth itself. Celestia's most detailed view of Earth is about the same as Google Earth's when you are zoomed out to the maximum distance.

You could record the intergalactic -> Earthwide view in Celestia, and then record another zoom from the identical view of Earth inward until you can view individual trees, etc. If you're really clever or resourceful, you could choose a location that you have a very detailed aerial photo for, and then zoom in on that shot, and then record another zoom that you can film with an actual camera, all the way down to an ant or a person walking around, or a car driving along, etc.

At least, you'll want Celestia and Google Earth.

Answer 3

Google Earth, need I say more?

Answer 4

What youre describing kinda reminds me of the space-navigation  sections of the games Mass effect and Nexus - the jupiter incident.

Its not quite to the point of viewing mountains from up close, but still, the galaxy stuff is spot on.

Answer 5

You can get something a bit like that using software like Starry Night (Stellarium etc), but not sure it will give you what you want.

You could try combining that with Google Earth and Google Sky!

Answer 6

You could start off with an alien night sky, and zoom in on a galaxy that turns out to be the milky way.  Then just zero in on Earth's place in the galaxy.