19 September, 2003

Late Balloon Flight

Today we tracked our balloon till well past midnight. Although, strictly speaking, midnight is not exactly dark like night. We are getting closer and closer to the equinox. For those in the North September 23 will be Fall, and here I will have Spring. I tried taking a couple of pictures of the Southern Cross again and also the red sun glow at night.

People have odd sleep hours, staying up late till the morning is very common. I imagine it will get worse as the sun is fully exposed.

The pockets of air that we are trying to hit are on the order of a few hundred kilometers wide. When that pocket has passed over us we have missed our launch window. That is what happened the other night when the winds picked up. Tomorrow we have an afternoon launch and we are hoping for good weather. We are having troubles with our lithium batteries on the large balloons, they do not seem to be able to power the instrument.

The Southern Cross

A view of the red glow at about 10 pm. You may also see lights to the left, those are runway lights of Pegasus, if the Medivac flight comes in it will land there.