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Home Facebook Page Members Gloal Links   .S&T Observing Page   .Heavens Above   .Space Weather Local Links   .Bruneau Dunes   .Centennial Observatory   .Faulkner Planetarium		The Herrett Center, Magic Valley Astronomical Society, and members of the Magic Valley Chapter of the Idaho Society of Radio Ameturs launched a high altitude balloon Saturday morning August 13, 2005. I will build a web page for the flight and add it to this site, but for now there are a couple of fantastic videos I've got to show you! burst: This video was taken with the 24" Herrett Telescope with the camera directly coupled to the telescope. The balloon was about 30 miles away, at an altitude of about 87,000 feet! I believe it is the first image of its kind ever taken of an amateur balloon flight. There is a lot more footage of the flight taken through the telescope, but this is the most dramatic. Note that the burst starts about 15 seconds into the video, at 17 seconds the parachute is deployed, and by 18 seconds the payload and parachute have dropped out of view. Watch for the smoke ring right after burst. CSI: This video was sent from an ametur television camera in the payload stack. The video shows about 80 seconds of flight. The balloon passed almost directly over our heads at the Evans Expo Center launch site. stack: The payload stack and balloon as it was launched. The movies are here: MVAS-05-01 There are three sizes, and each is available in Quicktime, Real Player and Windows Media Player format. Please select the size and format you prefer. The larger formats look better, but take longer to download. Look for previous contents of this page here.