urf.

from greta. my little cousin… she is somethin else. i remember when she was about a week old, i got to go to atlanta with my mom to see her.  i was 6 and of course, when we arrived, she was sleeping.  that’s what babies do. my mom and aunt were out visiting on the porch while she lay sleeping in her little bassinet.  i so wanted her to wake up.  i thought if i touched her, maybe she would kinda stir and i could pretend she awoke on her own.  i patted her back. nope.  gently stroked her cheek. nah-uh.  abort mission.  i’ll never forget staring down at her and wanting to play with my new baby cousin.  now she’s 22, but she’s still my baby cousin.  just graduated from georgia tech, has interned with nasa… still my baby cuz.  i don’t get to see her and her family nearly enough, but last week was one of those few and far-between opportunities!

so, yeah.. i am so proud of this girl.  recently she participated in a workshop in boulder, co where she and the other participants built a balloon satellite… each person built their own small satellite with a canon powershot inside.  each camera was rigged up to make an exposure every 10 seconds.  then the satellites were all linked together in a chain, and the chain of satellites was attached to a 10ft helium-filled weather balloon.  the participants stood in a line and released their satellites (all linked together in a line on the weather balloon’s tail) one at a time.  the weather balloon climbed up up up, and expanded as it did, so that the 10ft diameter weather balloon became 100ft in diameter!  the satellite continued its climb until the weather balloon popped, which was around 1,000ft… 3 times higher than airplanes fly!!!!!  uh, houston… we have a… chain of satellites?  the weather balloon also had gps, so as soon as the whole thing was launched, they all climbed into an suv and flew over country roads tracking their balloon/sats.  sarah’s team’s satellite was toward the bottom of the chain, so it got tossed and twirled around a bit more, so the pics that are closer to the ground after the balloon popped have more motion.  here are some pics from her satellite. i put some closer to the ground at the beginning and end of the post, but honestly i’m not sure which of these are the take-off and which are the landing.

the strip of bright blue you see right over the earth is the earth’s atmosphere!!

little bit of flare, space style!

maybe i’m crazy, but i really think that i can juuuuust barely begin to see the “rectangles” of civilization in the pic below… they can be seen more clearly in the pic after it.  just me?  like in the lower right corner???  probably not, but it sure looks like it.

wow. i love too how you can see the shadow of the clouds on the ground!

check that out – you can see the curve of the earth!