Hodge-podge

Just a few random shots for you this week, of some of the general silliness that sometimes goes on around here....

...of the AMAZINGLY huge pretzels that our two German stationmates made for the Oktoberfest they staged for us at the beginning of the month...

...and the NOAA weather/atmospheric balloon launch I participated in during the heart of the ozone depletion season. The balloon is that jellyfish-like object in the sky. I've posted balloon-launch pics before, but now that it's actually light out you can see the balloon as it heads away from us, about 20 second after I let go of it. Long after the launch, you can sometimes still see the balloons looking like stars in the sky.

Here's the balloon flight profile from our trusty NOAA rep, which he sent to us with the following info: "The flight was great: didn't get quite as high as the last few flights because the balloon popped and came back down quickly instead of leaking and floating, but that was actually the goal, so all good.  The profile was fairly similar to the last one (which was so far, and will likely end up being, the season's low) up until about 24 km, at which point there was a bunch more ozone all the way up to the burst, so the total ended up significantly higher."