About a dozen weather balloons carrying high-definition cameras and science experiments took to the skies this month as part of an unprecedented study of auroras. Launched from near Fairbanks, Alaska, the balloons were designed to be a cost-effective way to study the light shows and to see how the charged particles that create auroras affect Earth. "We're trying to image the auroras from an altitude of about 100,000 feet [30 kilometers]," said project founder Benjamin Longmier, a physicist with the Ad Astra Rocket Company and an adjunct member of the physics department at the University of Houston in Texas. "We knew going into this that this was going to be a very difficult feat, but we were...
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