Space Photography For Half A Grand

[Admiral Valdemar]

Father captures pictures of earth using camera fixed to weather balloon
A father captured pictures of earth using a standard camera fixed to a weather balloon.

Robert Harrison used his ingenuity and a collection of cheap parts worth just £500 to take the spectacular shots using a Canon camera which he launched 35km above the planet's surface.
The 38-year-old father-of-three has launched 12 High Altitude Balloons since his hobby started in October 2008.

It all started when Mr Harrison, of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, tried to take aerial photos of his house using a remote control helicopter, which turned out to be a non-starter.

But he refused to give up and researched on the internet the idea of using a meteorological balloon like the ones used by weather centres.
Mr Harrison, a married IT director, launched his first balloon, named Icarus I, in October 2008 and it was an amazing success, taking such stunning shots of more than 1,000 miles of the Earth's surface that NASA got in touch.

"NASA had heard what was happening and wanted to know how I'd done it so cheaply," he said. "People think this is something that costs millions but it doesnt.

"You just need a bit of technical know-how. I know nothing about electronics and what I do know, I learned from the internet.

"My family and friends thought I was a bit mad a first but they were suitably impressed with the results. The pictures speak for themselves, they put everything into perspective."

To control the path taken by the balloon, he used a standard GPS tracking device, similar to an average in-car Sat-Nav, and linked it to a radio transmitter, which allowed him to monitor the balloon's height to within 10m and make it easy to find once it returns to earth.
He linked his simple digital camera to computer software on the ground and wrapped both the camera and the GPS device in loft insulation from a local DIY store - the whole thing weighs just 1kg.

The heat produced from these devices, together with the insulation, which costs £3 a sheet helps keep the contraption functioning.
The balloon rises through the atmosphere and the higher it goes, the more the air pressure increases, causing the balloon to expand, until it parachutes back down to earth.

Mr Harrison has spent £4,000 in total on sending his low-tech balloons into space.
Luckily he has got each one back - although he sometimes has to travel up to 50 miles to retrieve his equipment and he can only send it off when weather conditions are just right.

Check the link for a fairly small image. I'm trying to find some decent ones to link to, but this is pretty damn impressive stuff.

[Darth Tanner]

Luckily he has got each one back - although he sometimes has to travel up to 50 miles to retrieve his equipment and he can only send it off when weather conditions are just right.

How on earth can he control its drift to that extent when its going so high, surely even light winds would be blowing it to another continent or out to sea!

Also why do people call their space projects Icarus and not expect them to burst into flames.

[eion]

That is just damn impressive. 50 miles west almost puts it in the Irish Sea, so I guess he has to wait for easterly or south-westerly winds before he can launch. Wonder if he ever points the camera down though...

Note to NASA, Google, et al: FUND HIM!!!

[Spectre_nz]

That's pretty impressive for a hobbyiest. I wonder how long until you end up with small home-made satelites... And weather reports that quote your chances of being hit by a falling toaster oven.

I wonder what the flat earth societ thinks of this. The whole 'only rich governments have the resources to take high altitude photographs and they're all part of a conspiracy that produces fake pictures of the earth as a globe' argument kinda falls flat when some guy from Yorkshire can do this in his spare time.

[Sea Skimmer]

Neat but 35km altitudes is hardly space. Nor is this idea remotely new as the US extensively spied on the USSR and China using camera equipped balloons at similar altitudes throughout the cold war. Indeed the US also sent manned balloons to this height, and made a parachute jump from 31km. The record height for a balloon is 53km. 35km is high, but it’s still low enough that you could fly an airplane at that level if you felt like building one.

That's pretty impressive for a hobbyiest. I wonder how long until you end up with small home-made satelites...

The normal international definition of the edge of space is 100km, three non trivial times higher. You have to go even higher in turn to able to sustain an orbit that wont decay in hours. Even that high enough air is left to impart significant drag on a satellite. Stuff orbiting at 200km will only last a few months without a sustainer engine.

We may well have home made satellites in the future, but actually launching one into orbit would require a private effort on par with Spaceship One, not 10 dollar balloons. For obvious reasons balloons do not work as a space launch system (though rockets carried to significant heights by balloons and then released for air launch are an option)

[Covenant]

For people who are interested in this kind of thing, a group I helped start up plans on organizing these kinds of events yearly, and will gladly share info. We've got like... 38 international contestants so far? It's really not that rough, but it's cheaper with a team, and even less if you have some start-up machinery. We're considering manufacturing our own hydrogen, for example, rather than buying helium.

Anyway, if you're interested, take a look. Once we've launched I'll be able to share some stories about things that worked real well for us.

[Sarevok]

Is launching baloons so high without consulting with aviation authorities safe ? I mean what if the baloon drifts into a path commonly used by aircraft.

[Sea Skimmer]

In the US if a balloon has a payload of less then six pounds, you can launch it at will. If it is over that weight a notice to airmen must be filed in advance of launch. But height doesn't matter, 35km = 114,800 feet. Commercial jets usually fly at about 33,000-41,000 feet. Even military aircraft don’t usually fly much higher then this, so a balloon like this cannot be a hazard once it is drifting at max ceiling. Normal weather balloons are designed to rise until the internal pressure is so much greater then external pressure that they just burst and crash.

Collisions are extremely rare. The sky is a very big place and usually people are smart enough not to launch directly under known aircraft flight paths.

[Covenant]

In some places we've been told the cutoff is four pounds, but yeah. You're allowed to send up a balloon without authorization, though we've done all the appropriate homework and discussed with the FCC the kinds of transmitters we can use for monitoring ascent and descent, and so forth.

If you're concerned where you are, contact some the FCC and FAA and they seem to be pretty responsive.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Neat but 35km altitudes is hardly space. Nor is this idea remotely new as the US extensively spied on the USSR and China using camera equipped balloons at similar altitudes throughout the cold war. Indeed the US also sent manned balloons to this height, and made a parachute jump from 31km. The record height for a balloon is 53km. 35km is high, but it’s still low enough that you could fly an airplane at that level if you felt like building one.

There's nothing new under the sun regarding what he's seeing or doing, it's how he's done it, which has impressed NASA and ESA among others. While the military and space agencies have done far more, that this single guy has managed this so well with off-the-shelf components and with brilliant clarity is to be respected. Though I also had quibbles over the use of "space" in the articles, though the stories are more for laymen to understand that this isn't some hot air balloon flight photo op, but a wee bit higher.

[Sea Skimmer]

Though I also had quibbles over the use of "space" in the articles, though the stories are more for laymen to understand that this isn't some hot air balloon flight photo op, but a wee bit higher.

Yeah that was my main issue, the article is very deliberately trying to play it up with bullshit about space, and claiming he ‘controls’ the flight path with GPS when in fact it just has a beacon to aid recovery. People seemed to be taking that bullshit at face value.

[eion]

People seemed to be taking that bullshit at face value.

Who's taking it that way? The article is poorly written and could be seen to imply that, but no one in this thread has said "OOO, he uses the GPS to control where it goes, awesome!"

[Sky Captain]

IIRC last summer few Spanish students did the same thing by launching a weather balloon equipped with modified 100$ digital camera and also took amazing pictures of Earth from over 30 km high. Basically anyone with some free time, electronics and programming knowledge and little creativity can do this for few hundred $.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Who's taking it that way? The article is poorly written and could be seen to imply that, but no one in this thread has said "OOO, he uses the GPS to control where it goes, awesome!"

Not necessarily people here, but elsewhere. The BBC News report showed what he did better, since he was wandering around the countryside with an RF antenna in his hand, like he was dowsing for something. Anyone who's seen a nature documentary with tagged animals will know what he's doing.

But yeah, the media does tend to oversimplify the fuck out of science for the masses. I cringe whenever I read anything about GM, or the "God particle".

[PeZook]

People, you're all dumbasses: the photograph is clearly a fake designed to perpetrate the Moon Hoax. I mean, there are no stars visible? Please!



There are people actually saying the above...


The interesting thing is that this isn't something terribly difficult to do and other people have done the same thing ; I have to wonder how much truth there is to his claims that NASA got all interested in him all of a sudden, and more to the point: just how useful will this technique be for actual science? I.E. how much additional investment would be necessary to turn this from "can take a single random photo" to "can collect actual useable data about things we're interested in"?

[starslayer]

The interesting thing is that this isn't something terribly difficult to do and other people have done the same thing ; I have to wonder how much truth there is to his claims that NASA got all interested in him all of a sudden, and more to the point: just how useful will this technique be for actual science? I.E. how much additional investment would be necessary to turn this from "can take a single random photo" to "can collect actual useable data about things we're interested in"?

That depends on just what you're interested in, but for serious research, it's usually quite expensive. Rather predictably, using balloons for scientific research is not a new idea, and they have been in use for decades. Cosmic rays were discovered by a balloon experiment, and are still studied using them. Weather balloons are an obvious one, and there are many other uses for balloons in scientific research and data collection.

[PeZook]

That depends on just what you're interested in, but for serious research, it's usually quite expensive. Rather predictably, using balloons for scientific research is not a new idea, and they have been in use for decades. Cosmic rays were discovered by a balloon experiment, and are still studied using them. Weather balloons are an obvious one, and there are many other uses for balloons in scientific research and data collection.

Obviously it's not an unknown technique, but there are people gushing all over this guy's experiment, laughing at NASA's ineptitude, etc.

And none of them seem to ask the million dollar question: If you want to study certain phenomena, you need a proper instrument suite capable of reliably collecting useable data. How much does it increase the cost? Probable answer: by a metric fuckload.

Let's face it: the guy did this with off-the-shelf equipment, but all he did was take a some cool pictures. I doubt he'd be able to take a set of, say, high altitude weather measurements for anywhere close to the same price.

[eion]

I doubt he'd be able to take a set of, say, high altitude weather measurements for anywhere close to the same price.

Because digital thermometers and barometers are really that expensive?

[starslayer]

And none of them seem to ask the million dollar question: If you want to study certain phenomena, you need a proper instrument suite capable of reliably collecting useable data. How much does it increase the cost? Probable answer: by a metric fuckload.

Yes it does; at a rough guess, most balloon research experiments cost several million dollars at least, for the specialized balloon, the instruments (which will almost certainly be custom built by a team of scientists), the launch, and controlling it once it's up there. You can't really put a parachute on a cosmic ray experiment, for example; the balloon must stay intact the entire time, and then be carefully landed.

Weather balloons and their instruments are actually quite cheap; you buy the balloons themselves for about $20 in some cases (they can cost about $100 to fill if you use helium; hydrogen is cheaper now), and the instruments cost only a few hundred, and are reusable. An entire setup for control and recovery might only run you a few thousand dollars. If they weren't this cheap, no one would send them up twice a day every day, yet most weather stations around the world do. However, weather balloons are not representative of the cost of most balloon experiments; you expect them to keep rising until they burst (i.e., the balloon is expendable), the instruments are all off the shelf and widely available (and they're not that fragile, so they can survive a landing using an el-cheapo parachute), and the balloons themselves aren't that large.