This image was taken from a high altitude balloon launched by my students and I from Delta Utah. During its voyage it traveled northward, allowing us to see Utah Valley University where my students and I call home. (Directly adjacent to the small bay jutting upward from the middle of the upper border of the lake). Besides a still and video camera on board, we also had instrumentation recording temperature, gps generated position, wind speed, barometric pressure, humidity and altitude. This picture was taken from 110,000 ft and shows Utah Lake below. It is fun to begin to see the curvature of the earth and the thin blue line that is our atmosphere taken from this level of the stratosphere, 33 km above the ground. The snowcapped Wasatch mountain range can be seen stretching northward above lake.
The courageous, late Christa McAuliffe reminds us that space, or even near space, is not just for astronauts, but even for university students!!
"Space is for everybody. It's not just for a few people in science or math, or for a select group of astronauts. That's our new frontier out there, and it's everybody's business to know about space."
Christa McAuliffe, Teacher and Challenger Astronaut
Ps- Several have asked below for a bit more information regarding the launch. Here is a video we took of the launch that may help a bit. It is 4 minutes long.
https://vimeo.com/162438276
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