Test giant telescope with telescope

This balloon is designed to bring the world's largest solar telescope into the atmosphere and has completed a 10-hour test flight.

When the telescope made the first scientific flight in 2009, it would take photos of the sun in the ultraviolet range, providing clear images twice as much as any solar observatory. before, and opened up the light of the cause of dangerous solar winds.

So far, ultraviolet strip observations cannot be performed on the ground, because the ozone absorption properties of the ozone layer (and thus protecting human life) also make the rays impossible. reach the telescopes on the ground.

So since 1957, astronomers had to send ultra-violet observatories to the upper atmosphere by using hot air balloons.

This US project is named Sunrise , with a 1 meter diameter UV glass, designed to bring the balloon up to an altitude of about 37 km. It can capture images of the sun with a width of 30 km, twice the resolution of other media - also the width considered to be the smallest structures visible on the sun so far. .

Thin taps, blown by the wind into a bow, are filling a helium balloon.Most airships - larger than large passenger planes - are not loaded with gas so it can expand when reaching the stratosphere, where air pressure is low.(Photo: NewScientist)

T. An