A group of alumni and students at Clarkson University have gotten a bird's eye view of the world without ever leaving the ground. The Amateur Radio Club at the college recently launched and recovered a weather balloon. Our Rachael Paradis has more on the lift-off and the adventure the club went on to find the balloon again.

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CU grad student Patrick Wilbur said, "We know that you don't see the blackness of space until reasonable high up. We saw that with the camera and based on the shots, we're able to estimate that it was around 80,000 or more feet."

The cameras on board took about 3,000 pictures of space and the ground. The balloon flew around the Potsdam and Adirondack area for about two days before it popped and fell.

Patrick Wilbur and Tyler Conlon are among the dozen people in the radio club who had to take a hike, go on some rural drives and catch a plane to find the balloon in the forests of the Adirondacks.

Wilbur said, "Very exciting, especially since it's our first launch and the data from the GPS was interrupted. The odds of actually finding it are pretty slim."

Wilbur and Conlon say that this launch was just a learning experience to see what they could do. They hope to do another launch this summer, with more expensive equipment and to take their research even further.

CU alumni Tyler Conlon said, "What we want to receive on the next launch and log is the temperature, relative humidity, the pressure."

And the radio club is confident that the second launch will be even better than the first.

You can check out more pictures taken from the weather balloon online at picasaweb.google.com/tycon1337/TheGreatGigInTheSky.