Weather Balloon Pictures I took on Saturday

[alanp]

Over the weekend I launched a weather balloon and took some pictures.  Had two cameras shooting a new image every 5 seconds.  We found it with a GPS tracker after it had traveled about 75 miles.

[ChrisMC]

Wow, that is pretty awesome. Love the one with the debris. That thing got up pretty high!

[alanp]

Yeah, I got the idea from two MIT students who did the same thing, looked like a fun project.

[QuadShot]

Awesome dude. Just out of curiosity, what did that whole thing cost you? I'd LOVE to try that!!

[Bryancd]

VERY COOL!!!!

[Bromptonboy]

Awesome dude. Just out of curiosity, what did that whole thing cost you? I'd LOVE to try that!!

Ditto - I would like to do that with my son's scout troop.

[Bryancd]

Awesome dude. Just out of curiosity, what did that whole thing cost you? I'd LOVE to try that!!

Ditto - I would like to do that with my son's scout troop.

Send on of the Scout's up! That would be a sweet merit badge! :)

[QuadShot]

Awesome dude. Just out of curiosity, what did that whole thing cost you? I'd LOVE to try that!!

Ditto - I would like to do that with my son's scout troop.

Send on of the Scout's up! That would be a sweet merit badge! :)

That would be the Oh Shi... Badge! :-)

[Bromptonboy]

The leader is Russel..  ;)

[MARKO]

way cool!  did you have to contact the  FAA and go through some red-tape before the launch?


Marko

[turtlesrock]

there at the edge of space.... awesome :D

[alanp]

Well, it was about $70 for the balloon, the cameras were each about $40 from eBay.  It was $100 to rent the helium tank for the weekend.  I had planned on using a boost mobile location system for tracking but ended up using a GPS locater from radio shack, $100 locator, $30 activation, and $20 for the one month of service.  And I think I'll try to return the GPS locator because it really didn't even work that great.  Luckily we found it.  But it stopped transmitting back once on the ground.  And the parachute was $30.  Then there were smaller expenses, the ice chest, orange paint, batteries, SD cards, electrical tape, twine, rope.  Long story short, I could have bought a really nice camera for what I put into this!

I did have to call the FAA to get a bulletin to pilots to be aware this balloon was going up.  Wasn't bad just one phone call.

Here are a couple of links to projects that documented all this:

http://space.1337arts.com/
These guys started this, I saw them on Diggnation and wanted to try it.

http://www.dinomission.blogspot.com/
These guys had a lot of great ideas and I took a lot from this one.

http://kaymontballoons.com/Near_Space_Photography.html
This is the balloon company's website.

[davekill]

The photos turned out great, any idea how high you got?

Your parachute must have been big enough to spot on the ground from a distance since you had to go out looking for it.

Maybe video next time?

[alanp]

Not really sure how high it got, I just wanted to get the black of space and the curvature of the Earth.  I looked it over with a physics professor yesterday and we couldn't tell. 

The parachute was only a small skydiving pilot chute (the smaller one that pulls out the big one).  We spotted it easily as it was painted bright orange.

[davekill]

The caption of this photo I found online reads...

This view from the Edge of Space was taken at an altitude of 70,000 feet, aboard a U2 aircraft. The curvature of the Earth, the blackness of space, and the thin sliver of Earth's protective atmosphere all help to calibrate our place in the cosmos.
http://www.setileague.org/photos/pixwk12.htm

looks like you got higher than that. :)

edit: the curvature of the earth they speak of in the caption must be due to the use of a wide angle lens in this example, lol!