A view from 117,597 feet

[giza]

The above, and more pictures from a camera that went up in a helium-filled balloon, snapping pictures once/minute, and be found on the SABLE-3 Balloon Launch page.

Cross-posted to science_porn.

Comments

[quentincoyote.livejournal.com]

Wow... That's awesome! :)

[rassah.livejournal.com]

Geez, I didn't think balloons could go up that high. There's practically no atmosphere up there for them to be "buoyant" on.

[giza.livejournal.com]

That's why you use a really stretchy balloon so that the helium in it expands as pressure decreases. I'm not a physics major, but I would /think/ that at that altitude, the helium would have close to the same pressure as the surrounding air. Assuming that the pressures are equal, helium still has an atomic weight of 2 versus 14 for nitrogen, so you have 1/7th the mass for the same volume. :-)