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2. Pacific Star II
1 year ago
This is the second trip of my home made high altitude weather balloon photography project, Pacific Star.
The balloon launched at 5:37pm,PST from Oxnard, CA and reached an altitude of 124,176' snapping photos and recording video along the way.
At its apex, the balloon burst, a parachute deployed, and the payload floated down for 35 minutes, landing near an olive orchard Northeast of Santa Paula.
Created by Colin Rich
facebook.com/colinrich1
The balloon launched at 5:37pm,PST from Oxnard, CA and reached an altitude of 124,176' snapping photos and recording video along the way.
At its apex, the balloon burst, a parachute deployed, and the payload floated down for 35 minutes, landing near an olive orchard Northeast of Santa Paula.
Created by Colin Rich
facebook.com/colinrich1
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Good job!
Great stuff!
There is a whole process I did to make it plane friendly. Radar reflector, bright colors, GPS positioning that was relayed...I tried to be as safe as possible.
I loved the idea.
I loved the design.
I loved the images.
I loved the video edition.
And you could get back the device. Yeahhhh!!!!!
Avoid take a photo of an Airbus or a satellite too close!
fantastic !
Thanks for sharing.
Fantastic project!
I used to live in Thousand Oaks, so I know exactly where this is.
How would you retrieve it if it landed in the ocean? Or were you just praying that it wouldn't?
Good question. Tracking the atmospheric conditions for the day through the NOAA, there was not really a chance of it blowing west, but on the slight chance that it did, the whole payload was very waterproof and very buoyant... The cameras would have most likely been ruined do to the lenses being exposed, but the memory cards are solid state and I sealed the opening off with hot glue prior to launch.
Tracking it down is probably the most fun I have had in a long time. I used a gps signal and google maps (google earth would only estimate the gps location to the nearest road) to track it down but as I found out from the 1st launch, government laws forbid gps signals to stop working after 60,000 feet so "rogue nations" cannot use it for missile guidance systems or other military fireworks.
After 60,000' I just had to do a little math to figure out where it should go until it returned on the descent.
The fun thing is that you never really know exactly where it will go until it lands... This time, it happened to land by an old olive tree orchard on a huge ranch. I caught the folks there about to close the main gate but they let us through and onto the fire road in order to access it. Once we had the coordinates, all we had to do was a little night hike through the orchard, around a bunch of mooing cows, to the payload.
but how u found it?
Nice job.
One Question: how did you protect the camera batteries form freezing up and possible leakage / explosion due to the minimal athomsperic pressure ?
and btw.: thanks for taking the time to answer questions !
Paul
A lot of thought and planning must have gone into this!
Awesome project! I'd like to know how your going to top this one on your next launch.
36 000 ft is 10.97 kilometers and not miles.
Shortly after it says "60000' (11.36 miles) "
It is correct. 60000 ft is 11.36 miles.
But 36 000 ft is 6.82 miles.
You are correct! I mixed up metrics and standards!
Thanks for correcting me!
Best
Colin
I’m still a bit unclear on how you tracked it.
The total payload was 1240 grams. The balloon was a 1000g sounding balloon. It was tracked using gps. I will be putting together a tutorial on the exact specs soon.
I would be very interested in the exact specs! I would love to try my own version of this! How did you manage the parachute to open?
I was just here watching a video by a couple of local kids (here in Washington state) who did something very similar for their high school senior project. They seemed to have better luck than you--their shots survived a hundred-thousand-foot free fall!--but your planning and hard work obviously paid off with amazing shots. Saw them in full Flickr glory and I was wondering something: JPEG compression has smoothed out the blackness of space, but in the original files, can you brighten enough to see stars? It wouldn't be aesthetically pleasing of course, but it would be technically interesting.
Nice idea and great vídeo!!!
During 2 minutes you can felling like an astronaut ^_^"
You can clearly see the true human impact on Earth.
Keep up the good work!
How dull the world would be indeed!
Thanks for the kind words. The spirit of adventure is there in everyone! That will never die. We just need to bring it out. Six months ago, i threw my xbox in the garbage...Not that it wasn't fun, but moreover in the fact that it just fills time with no end result.
My petty advice to anyone foolish enough to listen to me is to get out there and just try something new. What do you have to lose?
Much appreciated Michael!
Cheers!
Colin
do it again Bro!
can you hit the 150.000ft or higher?