Two NASA engineers have released a series of unique images that show the flames of the last space shuttle launch in a way the human eye can't see.

Using a custom camera mount holding seven cameras 1,250 feet from the space shuttle Atlantis on the launch pad, Louise Walker and J.T. Heineck set up equipment to capture more than 20,000 images during the spectacular 13 seconds of NASA's final shuttle launch at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"All five visible cameras record to internal memory and we communicate to them through Ethernet connections," said Heineck. "Each camera goes to a network hub, and we talk to the hub from miles away through the fiber optic connection."

Each taking 250 shots per second, Walker and Heineck's cameras snapped photos at different exposures. After shooting, software digitally removes saturated pure black (underexposed) or pure white (overexposed) pixels from one image and replaces them with the most properly exposed, and thus detailed, pixels in the set.

The resulting image is called a high dynamic range image, referring to the different dynamic ranges, or exposure and brightness, in each image, with a final product that captures the launch from a perspective the human eye can't see naturally.

This first image in the sequence was taken with the thermal infrared camera as the two solid rocket boosters (left) ignite followed by the main engine.