I can see something over New Zealand from Brisbane

The other night I was watching the International Space Station (ISS) over passing Brisbane and by using the ISS tracker I realized that as the ISS disappeared over the horizon it was now above New Zealand. This meant that while I was standing on the road outside my house in Suburban Brisbane, I was able to see an object in the air that was currently located over New Zealand.

Usually when i am looking for the ISS to fly over, there has been minimal cloud cover so it has been easy to spot it, but the other night, there was a lot of cloud cover, so I used the tracker to help me align where to look, it was then that I noticed where the ISS was currently which was over Emerald about 650 km North West of where I was now (Brisbane) , and the ISS had been above the horizon for a few minutes already,

I was pretty amazed that it was still that far away and I could see it, as I continued to monitor the ISS as it approached the horizon I was able to see that it passed fairly quickly South of Sydney and was still easily visible. I lost sight of the ISS when it was about 10 degrees above the horizon behind some trees and noticed that it was about to cross the coast of New Zealand which was about 2300 km away.

Path of International Space Station Click for Larger Image.

I estimate from where it disappeared that it would have been visible if I could spot it early, about 10 degrees above the horizon that it would be visible from the middle of the Gulf of Carpentaria (A in the image). Over B, which is where i was located all the way to the coast of New Zealand (C in the image ) a total distance of 4600 km.

The distances it will be visible from will vary depending on the height of the ISS, the orbit decays (gets closer to earth) and then rockets are used to increase the distance from Earth, I do not know when the ISS flew over if it was high, middle or a low height. The time and hence distance it will be visible for will also vary on how close the overpass is, this over pass was at 62 degrees so was a medium length overpass, a 20 degree overpass (Such as the overpass tonight 8th Jan 2013) would be noticeably less distance. If you are not sure why - get a tennis / basket ball and mark a dot where you are and move your finger over the ball as if it was the ISS.

See the International Space Station pass over Brisbane to tonight.

Click here for an updated overpass times 22 January 2013

At the moment there are six men, who are working and living in an artificial environment 370 km above the earth, travelling at nearly 8 km per second (28,000 km per hour) and tonight as it does every few weeks it will pass over our heads. This is the International Space Station.

At 8:10 pm for about 6 minutes it will be visible, over Brisbane, Queensland as small bright dot crossing over the sky. It will appear from the NW and will disappear to the SE, it will reach a maximum height of 76'. I have been monitoring the ISS for a few months now, and this is the highest and hence longest duration overpass I have seen,

Image courtesy of NASA.gov

From my experience last time, you won't be able to spot it until it is about 10 or 15 degrees above the horizon and will be pretty easy to spot. It's appears a lot brighter than the background stars and is noticeably moving across the sky. The space station is the third brightest object in the sky after the Sun and the moon.

I will be in Graceville park (with dogs) which is a good location to see it from as it is a large space so the horizon is very low. If anyone wants to come along feel free to come over and say hello.

Here is a link to the NASA site about how to see the Space Station, and you can sign up here http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/ to be notified of when it is flying over your location.

I think that this is something fantastic to show the kids as it may spark their imagination about space, and get them thinking about science. And since it is school holidays they can stay up a bit later if young.

Garbage bags full of hot air - Solar Balloons

Get a few cheap garbage bags, some sticky tape and some string, fill balloon with air, put in the sun and you have a Solar balloon. 

Tetroon shaped Solar Baloon

I was reading up on weather balloons and noticed an article that mentioned Solar Balloons, which I had never heard of before, and decided to see what they were. I read up on them for a few hours spending a fair bit of that time reading about a local Brisbane hot air balloon operator.

I found another site that had a DIY section and it looked pretty straight forward so decided that I would give it a try. My first attempt was with a garbage bag that we had in the cupboard to put rubbish in, this was not a success. This bag was too high quality, so the plastic was not thin, so the bag weighed too much and any lift generated was not able to lift the garbage bag. This garbage bag was now used to for its intended purpose of holding rubbish.

Upon further reading I learnt that the cheaper garbage bags are better for this sort of thing as they are thinner and thus weigh less. This makes them pretty useless as a garbage bag, but great for a Solar Balloon. So I headed to the local Coles and Woolworths and looked for the home brand Garbage bags, we bought 4 different types and they have been summarized in the table below.

			Liters	Grams	Liter per gram
	Quality	Brand	Size	Weight (1 bag)	Size per weight
	Low	Coles	240	42	5.71428571428572
	Low	Coles	54	14	3.85714285714286
	Low	Woolworths	240	58	4.13793103448276
	Low	Woolworths	56	28	2
	High	Unknown	56	25	2.24

The Coles home brand Wheelie bin garbage bags were the best bags, and cost about AUD $1 for a pack of four of them from Coles.

HOW DOES IT WORK ?

Basically we are looking for the greatest volume to weight ratio, as that means that there is a lot of air inside the balloon to be warmed up, with the least weight for the balloon to lift.

How a solar balloon works is the black plastic absorbs the energy from sunlight which will heat the air inside which reduces the density of the air, making it lighter than the surrounding air which creates lift so the balloon will rise. This is similar in concept to a hot air balloon, just that a hot air balloon, the energy is provided by a gas burner, rather than from the sun.

These balloons work better with cold or cool air and bright direct sun, so that there is a greater difference between the heated air inside the balloon and the external 'cooler' air. I have tried them both in Summer and Winter and was able to get it working under hot and cold temperatures. The balloons fly best in the morning when there is less wind and when the air has not had much time to warm up, I have tried a few times in the afternoon and never been able to get the balloon aloft. It will take about 15 minutes for the air to warm up inside the balloon. Direct sunlight works much better than cloudy or indirect sunlight.

Cylinder Solar Balloon
with Sun flare :)

This morning, when I tested it in the park, the air temperature was about 27'C when I put the thermometer on black plastic the temperature was about 38'C which is an 11'C difference in temperature.


The black plastic was 11'C higher in temperature than the surrounding air.


There is not a very large amount of lift produced but their is sufficient for the balloon to rise fairly rapidly into the air. If you build a large enough balloon it can create enough lift to lift a human. Due to their low lift capacity and large surface area these solar balloons are very prone to being blown around by the wind, when flying one of these balloons you need to have a fairly windless day and walk with the balloon following the wind so that you can stay underneath the balloon, to achieve maximum height. If you stand still and let the balloon drift on a tether the wind will blow the balloon down to the ground as the maximum length of the tether is reached.

I always fly the balloon with an attached tether as it is illegal to fly something over 400 foot high without prior CASA approval, and where I fly these balloons is under the flight path from a small aircraft and helicopter airport. I use a kite string for the tether, which works well.You can see in the following video that the string is 'flicking' this is as it is unwinding from the kite holder

BUILD ONE YOURSELF 

This is something that is very easy to build, something that you can build with your kids and is very cheap to test, it just needs some string, some sticky tape, and some cheap garbage bags. The garbage bags that I use cost me about 25 cents ($AUD) each, so the balloon I flew this morning cost me 75 cents. Something great to keep the kids amused one morning this holidays and teach them about some basic science and aerospace.

I have noticed that people do get rather curious about what I am doing when I have about. 600 liter 4 meter long black tube 60 foot in the air, and will often, come up to me and talk to me about it.

I have heard of people releasing these balloons and achieving heights of 20,000 feet, one day when I get time, I will look into releasing one with telemetry and an altimeter to see how high and how far it goes, but I will need to be nowhere near controlled airspace to be allowed to do this.

There are two shapes that most solar balloons tend to be either a long cylinder, or a tetroon, I recommend starting with the long cylinder shape first as they are the easiest to make and will only take about 30 minutes to put together, the tetroons takes about two hours to make is a fair bit harder to make, but is a more efficient shape (larger volume for the same amount of garbage bags). Try not to use too much sticky tape as that is just added unnecessary weight.

Give it a try with your kids these holidays, an easy fun experiment that will teach them something.