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Students Take Space Photos With Simple Latex Balloon and Digi-Cam

by Terrence O'Brien on March 18, 2009 at 03:10 PM

Spanish Students Take Photos of Space With Balloon and Digi-Cam
Who needs the Hubble? Not Gerard Marull Paretas, Sergi Saballs Vila, Marta­ Gasull Morcillo and Jaume Puigmiquel Casamort, that's for sure.

The four Spanish teenagers, working with their teacher Jordi Fanals Oriol as the Meteotek team at the IES La Bisbal school in Catalonia, started with a fairly lofty goal: They wanted to launch a balloon with a digital camera and some custom-built electronic sensors to 30,000 feet. Much to their surprise, they ended up considerably exceeding their expectations. Their $60 heavy duty latex balloon and $80 Nikon digital camera soared to 100,000 feet, right to the edge of space. Describing the team's homegrown approach, Gerard Marull Paretas told the Telegraph, "We took readings as the balloon rose and mapped its progress using Google Earth and the onboard radio receiver."

Like something out of a Roald Dahl book or upcoming Pixar film, these four students were able to accomplish something unexpected, and quite impressive, with meager resources. This is recession astronomy -- for less than the cost of some people's electric bills, the group was able to capture some stunning images from the very limits of the Earth's atmosphere. Check out the gallery below for some images from the team's Flickr feed. [From: Telegraph]

Meteotek08



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Tags: balloon, balloons, kids, photography, science, space, spain, students

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