A British inventor has created a $700 weather balloon that takes NASA-quality photographs of the Earth's environment.
Digital camera? Check. GPS system? Check. Polystyrene box? Check. Duct tape? Check. Balloon? Check.
Somehow, this doesn’t sound like the sort of device that would have NASA salivating. But Robert Harrison, a 38-year-old IT director from West Yorkshire, England, has received the admiration of astronomists all over the world for the detailed photographs of the Earth’s surface he took using a homemade weather balloon.
“A guy phoned up who worked for NASA who was interested in how we took the pictures,” Harrison told The Times. “He thought we used a rocket. They said it would have cost them millions of dollars.”
Harrison’s cost? A mere $700.
Harrison’s DYI contraption, which he’s called the Icarus, uses an expanding helium balloon to rise as high as 21.7 miles above the Earth. An attached Canon camera with an auto-timer takes eight photographs and a video at five-minute intervals once the balloon is in motion. Once the balloon has popped, a small parachute floats the machine back down to Earth, and Harrison uses the GPS chip in the camera to locate the Icarus on the ground and collect it. Then comes his favorite part: checking out the photos and videos.
“I was gobsmacked when I got the images,” Harrison said. “Seeing the highest pictures was amazing — that’s a lifetime achievement.”
You can check out some of Harrison’s videos below, view all of his NASA-quality photos from his Flickr gallery, and learn more about it on his blog.
Want to see the Icarus in action? Take a look at this video at the BBC.