NEW KNOXVILLE, OH (WLIO) - While people flew into the Armstrong Airport to enjoy the eclipse, there were a few that had come to study it. Researchers from the Montana Space Grant Consortium were using balloons to send cameras up 85,000 feet into the atmosphere, which still technically isn’t space yet. They were not looking at the eclipse, but to study the effects of the temperature changes that the shadow of the moon creates as it passes over the earth.
“When the moon crosses over the sun’s path, we will see the atmosphere compress and re-expand when that comes back out from in front of the sun,’ says Zach Guentherman, Montana Space Grant Consortium. “That causes those differential wave in the atmosphere called gravity waves.”
Montana State University was one of the groups along the path of totality leading the “National Eclipse Ballooning Project”. The students designed the cameras and other equipment used during the flights.
“Kind of mind boggling to think that a system that I have been working on for about a year and half, two years now is going to be used and viewed by so many people,” says Noah Netz, Montana Space Grant Consortium. “The only ones that were viewing it was us and my parents.”
The project is funded by a grant from NASA.
