A Weather Balloon Carrying a Sun Telescope Is Currently Floating Towards North America

Once the chosen tool to loft Muppets or escape a Prussian siege, a balloon is carrying a sun-gazing telescope through the stratosphere toward North America.

Sunrise II, the floating observatory developed by the High Altitude Observatory, launched from the Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden yesterday. It will take four or five days riding the polar winds to reach northern Canada, where the solar observatory—touted as the largest ever to leave Earth’s surface—will parachute down.

The solar cycle is in a period of roiling magnetism as the Sun hurls radiation and particles into space. The original Sunrise telescope made a similar trip in 2009, but observed a placid and mellow Sun, and collected extremely detailed observations of sunspots. Crossing over the Arctic within weeks of the solstice gives researchers 24 hours of Sun-gazing a day.

The weather balloon carrying Sunrise II is 427 feet across. As it passed over Norway, the air control tower at Bodø’s airport received phone calls from confused people asking what the hjell was in the sky. Their confusion is understandable.

Parties interested in watching the sun-watcher can track the telescope here. As this article goes to press, Sunrise II is 22 miles up and approaching Greenland.