Made our second launch today, from the valley of the River Wye. Weather was not as kind to us as last time but the balloon behaved perfectly and the camera capsule parachuted back down to Earth, within about 10 miles of its predicted landing location. Couple of images to follow.

Gareth

Just a quick note to say we are planning a second launch, this time with the aim of having the balloon fly over the Severn Estuary, sometime in late August. Details still to be finalized, but the new balloon is on order! Watch this “near space”!

cheers for now,

Gareth

The whole Journey took around 5 hours in total and our cameras travelled a distance of 35 miles from Ross-on-Wye to a small village called Cropthorne. Our package landed in a tree hanging over a river. It took a lot of collaboration from the local neighbourhood to find it!

Mat

At optimum height, the balloon expands to around 13 meters in diameter…. then it bursts. When it bursts, the 48” parachute takes over and floats back down to Earth at around 15 mph.

Mat

The balloon reached heights of 22.5 miles above the surface of the Earth. You could clearly see the curvature of the planet and space beyond from this high up.

Mat

Some photos of from our sideways and downward facing cameras during the first few miles of ascent.

Mat

It took around 90 minutes set up. Here is a brief overview of the activities required to do this:

• Get the helium tank out of the van
• Lay everything out
• Inflate the balloon
• Prepare and secure the balloon for launch 
• Turn all of the equipment on inside the capsule 
• Tightly secure everything
• Pose a little for the cameras….
• LAUNCH!

Mat

We are all from Bristol in the UK. Here is the Space Photo Team from left to right:

• Chris Cardwell
• Mathew Roberts
• Samuel Morris
• Gareth Dorrian
• Chloe Bouvier
• Frank Morris

Mat

…..

Hello and welcome to ‘Space Photo’!

We are a team of a combination of photographers solar physicists and programmers, who have decided to to high altitude photography with the use of helium filled weather balloons.

This blog will detail the equipment we used, how we did it, some science, some geography and some fantastic photography and videos.

For our first post, we share with you an image from the very top of our ascent, which clearly shows the curvature of the earth and space beyond.

Mat