Ad Astra: Voyage and Return | Alma Hale | Official Video | 8K

A butterfly's voyage to the stars, and its return home. Ad Astra is a song in Latin for soprano, choir and orchestra by Alma Hale, a virtual artist created and directed by Riccardo Donati. Lyrics and the story of the song: https://www.almahale.com/ad-astra/ Images Every frame of this video is computed from physical models, simulated with scientific software and purpose-built code, under the direction of Riccardo Donati. No image was generated by AI. This is why the resolution is arbitrary, limited only by computing power: the version published here is true 8K (7680 × 4320), computed pixel by pixel. Some scenes freely reinterpret paintings by Vincent van Gogh: Almond Blossom, the Sunflowers, Wheatfield with Crows and The Starry Night. Words The Latin text was written by Riccardo Donati. Music The music was composed by Riccardo Donati, starting from the harmony and then adding the vocal line. Finally it was AI-rendered, giving life to the voice of Alma Hale, the choir and the orchestra. The harmony on its own, as a scrolling score:    • Ad Astra: A Harmonic Study | Alma Hale | F...   Scenes 0:00 Departure From an almond tree in bloom, a walk through one landscape that changes season: sunflowers, a wheat field with crows, snow, a starry night with its cypress. From petals and snow, a butterfly is born. Physics: fluid turbulence. A single wind moves everything. 0:28 Meteors The butterfly leaves the painted sky and flies into space, faster and faster, dodging the meteors. Sub nocte tacita, cor quaerit lumen. Per umbras, per silentia, ad astra. Under the silent night, the heart seeks light. Through shadows, through silences, to the stars. Physics: special relativity (aberration of light, Doppler effect). 0:57 The Storm A stormy sea at night. The butterfly descends among the curling waves; two bolts of lightning open the dark. Tu in tenebris, vox in silentio, aperi noctem, ostende viam. You in the darkness, voice in the silence, open the night, show the way. Physics: the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability; lightning as an electric discharge. 1:28 The Black Hole The cosmic web, and at the end of it a black hole. The butterfly passes behind it: gravity bends its image into a ring, and its colours dissolve into the disc. Ad astra per noctem profundam. Ad astra ubi lumen nascitur. To the stars through the deep night. To the stars where light is born. Physics: general relativity. The path of light around a black hole, gravitational lensing; the cosmic web. 2:02 Birth Dark, then a flash: sparks hanging in a time that stands still. Time starts, the sparks cool, bind three by three into triangles, and the triangles compose the butterfly again. Ubi silet tempus, ubi caelum fit mare, te quaero sine nomine, te sentio sine corpore. Where time falls silent, where the sky becomes sea, I seek you without a name, I feel you without a body. Physics: a plasma cooling while space expands. 2:28 The Pulsar Among countless galaxies the butterfly flies towards a single star, a pulsar, and reaches it along the arm of a spiral. The star becomes one of the stars of the painted sky. Non omnis lux est sidus. Non omnis vox est sonus. Ad astra. Astra, ad te. Not every light is a star. Not every voice is a sound. To the stars. Astra, to you. Physics: spiral galaxies; a pulsar. 2:58 Return The butterfly glides down towards home, slows among the almond trees in bloom and settles on a petal. Then only the wind moves. Physics: flight dynamics; wind over the grass. 3:20 Credits Copyright © ℗ 2026 Riccardo Donati. All rights reserved. A dedication from Riccardo This video is dedicated to my beloved H.M.D. #SopranoVoice #VincentVanGogh #PhysicsSimulation #ClassicalMusic #OrchestralMusic #LatinLanguage #OriginalSong #8K #AlmaHale