Air Date: July 27, 2009

Sarah Tuttle

Astronomical Ballooning - Or, What Goes Up Must Come Down

Scientific balloons are a (relatively) cheap and cheerful way to do novel astronomy and test ideas. I'll be talking about our recent flight of FIREBall - Faint Intergalactic Redshifted Emission Balloon. Our May flight from Fort Sumner, NM (burial spot of Billy the Kid) is the second for FIREBall, and we hope to map emission from the Cosmic Web - the gas in between galalxies that will reveal information about the distribution of matter in the universe. Hear what a balloon launch sounds like and learn about this exciting way to explore astronomy.

Sarah Tuttle is a fifth year graduate student in Astronomy at Columbia University. Her thesis project hinges on something which is designed to plummet 100,000ft out of the sky. When she's not panicking, she's pursuing activities that work towards lowering her generally elevated blood pressure. She received her bachelor's degree in physics from UCSC studying polymers and making LEDs. When someone suggested the manufacture of an animated burrito wrapper she switched back to astrophysics.