MIT students photograph earth from 18 miles up for $150

MIT students Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh have shot some photos of the planet by launching a homemade weather balloon — which is legal, apparently — from Sturbridge for just under $150.

Using off-the-shelf components — a 300g latex balloon, party-store helium, styrofoam cooler, handwarmers, GPS-enabled mobile phone, digital camera, parachute, duct tape, etc. — the students got the balloon camera to take pictures of the earth’s curvature and space from 18 miles up.

The students posted the photos to CNN’s user-generated iReport.com, and launched a website, 1337arts.com, to showcase “scientific art.”

Via Gizmodo.

Posted by Brendan Lynch

Tags: 1337arts.com, Justin Lee, MIT, Oliver Yeh

This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 11:34 am and is filed under Education & Training, Hardware, Massachusetts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.