Imagine walking through a dark New York City and being able to look up at the sky and see thousands of twinkling lights.
A new video sheds light on just that sight by reimagining the city without any light, showing what it could look like for stargazers if light pollution wasn’t in the picture.
Filmmakers Harun Mehmedinovic and Gavin Heffernan created the video in honor of the International Dark Sky Association’s Dark Sky Week, which runs from April 15 to 21 and includes a variety of events meant to spread awareness of the implications of light pollution on seeing starry skies.
The imagined time-lapse combines New York City’s sights with the dark night skies of the Grand Canyon and Death Valley national parks, showing the city illuminated solely by a blanket of stars.
The duo have spent years traveling to hundreds of locations to capture the beauty that lies in the last remaining dark skies on our planet as part of their project Skyglow, which uses a combination of photography, stories, and essays to show what our skies used to look like and the way light pollution has changed how we see them today.
For the video to become reality, the city would need to shut off all of its light to truly capture such dreamy skies, but the footage still provides an inspiring view of the city and what it could have looked like covered in darkness.