Recap of EOSS-090

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View from 96,000 feet

It is fairly rare that we get a definitive bearing on just what we are looking at when we obtain pictures from on board payload systems. Often an attempt to correlate shadows on the payloads or, if discernable, below cloud formations gives a ball park estimate. However, this time around we were afforded a view with a very recognizable landmark in the picture, the Moon. 99% of the astronomy software out there can be set to a particular latitude, longitude and date/time and tell you where to look for things, so it was quite easy to get the bearing from the payload to the moon, as shown below.

Webmaster Note: This photo is heavily massaged by Photoshop to bring up the luminance of the moon and UK wing, and add considerable contrast to the earth's surface. I originally made this enhanced version for my desktop wallpaper, so I wanted to make it pretty. One other slight modification, the earth from 1 or 2 degrees below the horizon to the top of the atmosphere has had a slight Gaussian blur applied to smooth the transition. The original photo without all this massaging is available as indicated below.


Click the picture above or HERE for a slightly higher rez version.

The balloon was still in ascent when this picture was taken. Because the wing is inflated, the payload is above 95,000 feet. That narrows the time frame to only a few minutes and I arbitrarily selected the time of 11:04 am MDT (17:04 UTC) which is very near burst time. A few minutes one way or another aren't going to significantly affect the bearing to the Moon.

 

Starry Night Pro 4.5 shows this information for the moon on April 30th 2005 at 11:04 am over Ft. Morgan, Colorado at an altitude of 30 kilometers. Note the azimuth of 235 degrees. The size of the moon is exaggerated in the display model for this program.

 

Here is a screen capture from DeLorme's Topo USA V5. The vector originates at the green dot of Ft. Morgan and proceeds along the same bearing of 235 degrees true. The photo is the view along this line overlooking Denver, the foothills and the mountains. In fact, the photo's horizon is substantially beyond this photo. Look at the main recap page to see a picture of an estimate of the radio horizon. That would match fairly closely to the visual horizon with only a little extra distance to compensate for the propagation characteristics of VHF radio.