Some Oddities and Interesting Things...

I haven't taken the time to look at all of the pictures and data carefully yet.  At first, we just scrolled quickly through the pictures to get to the "good stuff," but now I've started looking more closely and a few interesting things are popping up.   Check back to see if I find anything else.  I have finished uploading all of the photos if anyone is interested in looking for more sky-jellyfish (he's in the first picture of the sun below).  

This was from the first flight and was take by Camera 2, the bad Canon a530.  I mucked up the settings somehow and the resulting pictures were over-exposed.  However, after looking closely at these pictures, I noticed a thin band of light blue embedded in the atmosphere at about the exact location of the "Tropopause," which is the layer between the troposphere and the stratosphere.  So in hindsight, Camera 2 actually collected important data and some interesting shots. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Due to the breezy conditions, the Led Zeppelin Beer Cooler payload got tossed around quite a bit.  Occasionally, the camera just happened to catch a shot of the sun.  On the left is from about 10,000 feet, looking through the Cirrus clouds.  From this relatively low vantage point, we are still seeing blue sky due to wave-length diffraction by the air.  In the middle photo, we are climbing above the Cirrus and picked up an "ice crystal" halo, or "ring around the sun," usually only visible in the winter, when the air is very dry and clear. Finally, and quite luckily, when the balloon popped at 93,910 feet, the Led Zeppelin swung around and caught the picture on the right.  At this altitude, with most of the Earth's atmosphere below us, we have an unobstructed view of the sun, sitting in black space.

Thumbing through the photos as quickly as we did in all the excitement, pictures like this one were overlooked completely.  With all the wind, about 20% of our photos had motion blurriness.  I'll let you figure out what caught my eye here... I want to believe.  BTW, this shot has not been doctored, hacked or altered in any way.  If you click on the image, it should show you the full resolution picture.  Or better yet, check out the digitally enhanced picture below sent in by Ken using Photoshop CS3.  Thanks Ken, great work with the picture!