Today in TechDIY camera catches a ride to the edge of space and survives to bring back photos
Say you're a couple of tech students with an expensive camera and a hankering to take photographs of the curvature of the earth. Sadly, you have the equipment but not quite enough dough to catch a ride aboard a space taxi to take these marvelous images. When Erich Leeth and Terry Presley found themselves in that position, they did what any photographer would do: they encased their $2,200 camera into a beer cooler bought at Wal Mart, strapped it to a weather balloon, and sent it skyward.
The duo used a Nikon D300s DSLR equipped with Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens, a 22-foot weather balloon filled with helium, a parachute to break the contraption's fall, and an old cell phone with a GPS function to find where it landed. They planned the entire thing in 13 days, so it's forgivable that they didn't think about the problem that unfortunately ruined the majority of their highest-altitude shots: condensation that gathered and then froze on the camera's lens. Still, the camera made it to space and back in one piece, and the pair have already made some design changes in preparation for their next camera launch at the beginning of November.
Check out the photos from the Cygnus Project launch, including some impressive shots from an estimated 100,000 feet up!
[via Engadget]
This article was written by Katherine Gray and originally appeared on Tecca
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