Quick Post: Explorer II, 1935 High Altitude Balloon flown by Stevens and Anderson, first image from the Stratosphere

On the 11th of November 1935, over the skies of South Dakota, a new altitude record of 72,395 feet would be set in High Altitude ballooning and photography by Stevens and Anderson flying the Helium filled Explorer II.

The first Explorer balloon used the more efficient and more dangerous Hydrogen, the fabric tore, and the balloon burst into flames with the two passengers narrowly escaping via parachutes.

This was the first High Altitude flight to feature a camera.

First photograph clearly showing Earth's Horizon sagitta curvature. [src]
From its vantage point 72,395 feet in the air, the highest point ever reached by man, the camera registers the horizon 330 miles away, sweeping like a great arch across the photograph. The straight black line ruled across the top brings out the curvature of the Earth.

The first few seconds of this video shows some of the video footage they recorded (unmarked up):



British Pathé footage:



Book on early ballooning with lots more detail and information on many flights:

The Pre-Astronauts: Manned Ballooning on the Threshold of Space

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pic Gaspard (3880m)/Grand Ferrand (2758m) from Pic de Finestrelles (2826m) in the Pyrénées

Image
I have some new toys to share in this installment of 'Yes, the Earth really is Curved even though you can see one distant mountain peak from another', so this should be fun! This time we're going to look at a view of two distant mountains from Pic de Finestrelles (2826m) in the Pyrénées , taken by Marc Bret of Beyond Horizons (see also the Flickr album ). Pic Gaspard (3880m) in the Massif des Écrins range at a distance of 443 km. Grand Ferrand (2758m) at a distance of 392.48 km. Our view is right around 42.414466°N, 2.132839°E at about 2826 meters elevation, looking right along the coast. Pic Gaspard/Grand Ferrand from Pic de Finestrelles in the Pyrénées, image by Marc Bret The EXIF metadata shows this image was taken by a Panasonic DMC-FZ72 with a focal length of 215mm -- given the 5.62 crop factor of the 1/2.3" sensor in this camera, this gives you a 35mm equivalent focal length of 1200mm giving a full frame view of 1.644° wide and 1.215° high. Since 1521 x 101...
Read more

Flat Earth Follies: Planes would have to constantly pitch down to fly!

Image
Flat Earth Claim Planes would have to constantly pitch down to fly! Short Version In the Globe model "LEVEL" follows a sphere of uniform gravity potential. Feel free to disprove that is the case if you can but that is the model. In an airplane, Elevator Trim simply controls the RATE of pitch of an aircraft - not the actual pitch of the plane. A 747 flying at 35,000' would have a flight circumference of  about 2π*(3959+(35000/5280)) ≈ 24916 miles Flying at 570 miles per hour, this plane would fly a fraction of the 360° around given by 360*570/24916 Since that's 1 hour we can divide by 60 to get the degrees per hour: 360*570/24916/60 ≈ 0.137°/minute That is down in the noise since pitch rate is affected by temperature, density, power, and control settings on the plane you simply trim the plane for as close to ZERO vertical speed as you can and you've automatically compensated for all of them at once.  Of course, on a 747 computers do that.  In a small plane the pitc...
Read more

Fort Myers to Naples - Flat Earth failures continue

Image
No amount of curvature is enough for a Flat Earther.  We can SEE the shoreline disappear, and then the bottoms of buildings.  But since they don't understand the geometry of what they see they cannot properly evaluate it. Flat Earth once again fails to understand WHAT the horizon even is. @captscorch @ColdDimSum @nicholaspitts @CobraElDiablo @UnCastellsMes @twatterfull @sciencegecko @skeptropolis @FlatEarthReal Still waiting on my curve pic.twitter.com/zh2zFXmMVi — JACK (@Adidas68Jack) April 24, 2017 And a copy of the image from Jack just in case (which Jack now deleted). I'm going to admit right here at the start that I do not know the EXACT location from which this photo was taken.  Neither does 'Jack'.  However, we both know the APPROXIMATE location to within a few miles because we can see the nearby buildings and at least their rough orientation. But without a higher resolution image I cannot positively identify the distant buildings, and neither can Ja...
Read more