The Titanic Gets Its First 8K Footage, Giving Most Vivid Look At Its Wreckage

Nope, this isn’t about Titanic the movie, which incidentally is being remastered for the silver screen in time for the 110th anniversary of the fateful sinking.

This is about the RMS Titanic, which has now been captured in never-before-seen detail by the 2022 Titanic Expedition crew. The latest footage of the tragic ship that sank after hitting an iceberg on April 14, 1912, is the first and only 8K video of the vessel, bringing to light “an astonishing level of detail and colors,” says the group in a news release.

Modern-day researchers are assessing the Titanic’s rate of decay and the marine life that live around the wreck with the help of high-definition deep-sea cameras and 3D sonar scanners. “The amazing detail in the 8K footage will help our team of scientists and maritime archaeologists characterize the decay of the Titanic more precisely as we capture new footage in 2023 and beyond,” explains Stockton Rush, the president of OceanGate Expeditions.

Zoomed in, the cameras still reveal images in 4K quality.

Already, the team is picking up details that have been lost for 110 years. “I had never seen the name of the anchor maker, Noah Hingley & Sons Ltd., on the portside anchor,” says veteran Titanic diver Rory Golden, who works as an expert at OceanGate Expeditions and has been exploring the wreckage site for decades. “I can’t recall seeing any other image showing this level of detail.”

“It is exciting that, after so many years, we may have discovered a new detail that wasn’t as obvious with previous generations of camera technologies,” Golden continues.

You can watch the fascinating, minute-long video—chronicling an eight-day expedition—below.

Evident here are the bow, portside anchor, one of the hulls, and an anchor chain, among other items.

Occasionally, you’ll notice a couple of green light-up dots in the footage. The crew says those are part of its laser scaling system and are used to accurately measure how large the objects at the site are. The dots are 10 centimeters (about four inches) apart, and their distance is used to gauge the actual size of the artifacts that have settled 12,500 feet underwater.

Moving forward, researchers intend to take new videos every year and compare them to look at the ship’s year-of-year deterioration and unlock even more secrets.

[via PetaPixel and Popular Mechanics, cover image via OceanGate Expeditions]