This weekend is proving to be one of the more bizarre I’ve had for a while. I’m writing this from a barn on a pumpkin farm about two hours’ drive south of Chicago. I’m here for the Chicago Astronomical Society’s Astrofest and I’ll be talking later about Galaxy Zoo (of course).
I can’t resist sharing this video with you, though. The Adler Planetarium run a high altitude balloon programme using students and interns (and a weather balloon six-foot across) to launch instruments more than twice as high as your average Boeing 767 reaches. For reasons best known to themselves, one of these flights carried a marshmallow bird called a peep along with it.
You can watch the flight of the Peep below :
Paolo Amoroso on September 6, 2008
There are amateur balloon stratospheric flights also in your country, i.e. HAPS-1 and HAPS-D by Doug Ellison and other members of the Unmanned Spaceflight.com online forum. Check these threads from the end for some cool photos and videos (with audio): http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=5369 and http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=5427
astropixie on September 6, 2008
didnt expect to see such a good peep show on this blog. keep em coming!
i’ll be in oxford the weekend of the 20th. will you be around?
Alice Sheppard on September 9, 2008
44 seconds in I must stop watching before I throw up!
Peep-le do strange things!
Jules on September 10, 2008
Well it beats what I did today!
Ewan on September 11, 2008
What I want to know, is did Peep survive re-entry?