Several dozen students accompanied by a small posse of professors gathered at the University of Hartford athletic fields recently for a training exercise in eclipse chasing.
“We really need to get this launch up. We really need to get this balloon up,” a professor said, waving off a TV camera. “So questions later OK?”
The students and professors are part of the National Eclipse Ballooning Project, a NASA-led study examining what happens to the weather during a solar eclipse. Eighty academic institutions have grouped into 55 balloon-launching teams to study the two solar eclipses due to cross North America between now and next April.
At Wednesday’s training session at the West Hartford campus, several students gently cradle a deflated weather balloon in white-gloved hands. Larry Reed, a balloonist,…
