Low cost multi-purpose balloon-borne platform for wide-field imaging and video observation

TL;DR

This paper presents a low-cost, multi-purpose balloon platform for wide-field imaging and video observation, enabling amateur and professional collaborations to conduct astronomical and environmental observations from the stratosphere.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, affordable balloon-borne platform with scientific payloads, demonstrating its effectiveness through successful meteor shower observations and light pollution monitoring.

Findings

Successful observation of meteor showers from stratosphere

Detection of city light pollution emissions

Demonstration of low-cost platform's versatility

Abstract

Atmosphere layers, especially the troposphere, hinder the astronomical observation. For more than 100 years astronomers have tried observing from balloons to avoid turbulence and extinction. New developments in cardsize computers, RF equipment and satellite navigation have democratised the access to the stratosphere. As a result of a ProAm collaboration with the Daedalus Team we have developed a low-cost multi-purpose platform with stratospheric balloons carrying up to 3 kg of scientific payload. The Daedalus Team is an amateur group that has been launching sounding probes since 2010. Since then the first two authors have provided scienti fic payloads for nighttime flights with the purpose of technology demonstration for astronomical observation. We have successfully observed meteor showers (Geminids 2012, Camelopardalis 2014, Quadrantids 2016 and Lyrids 2016) and city light pollution emission with image and video sensors covering the 400-1000nm range.