If you've been strangely itching to get a closer look at the Sun without totally ruining your eyesight, you can color yourself quite fortunate. The aptly-named Sunrise project is an international collaboration involving a number of institutions that have successfully sent a jumbo-jet sized balloon some 120,000 feet high with a solar telescope riding shotgun. The plan is to send the massive device on lengthy journeys beginning in 2009 "that will capture unprecedented details of the Sun's surface," and furthermore, it could enable scientists to launch instruments up for testing without having to strap them onto a rocket and consequently destroy their budget. Set to take flight in the summer of '09 from Kiruna, Sweden, the balloon is scheduled to "capture continuous images for a period of several days to as long as two weeks," and no, you can't
buy a seat on this one.
[Via
Physorg]
posted Oct 23rd 2007 5:51PM
Hey!! I can see my house from here!
Uh oh. Did anyone tell you about the lack of atmosphere and solar radiation?
You're not going to be seeing anything anymore in about an hour, sorry man =(
These flights have been going on for years...why the prospect of taking pictures of the sun makes them suddenly cool is beyond me. The actual science that has been coming out of the earlier flights, including ones around the Antarctic poles, is absolutely stunning and is worth a look if you are so inclined. Numerous publications are out there already, and you don't have to wait until 2009.
I should have included this in the original post, it talks about both arctic and antarctic flights:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=103063
Uh oh!! Radiation?!!?! I'm bailing out!!
http://tinyurl.com/252dqq
Is the telescope riding "shotgun" if it is the only passenger?