Dear Friends,

Our flight for the BALLOON-SCI-ART-GALLERY project has finally taken place. It has been the first-ever hot-air balloon flight over the centre of Warsaw. Together, we create the history of the city!

It’s also the first educational and scientific project from which the pictures were directly transmitted to Earth and live-viewed at schools and many other educational and cultural institutions in Poland and abroad. The mission was also broadcasted for the students of Varsavianistics and watched in real time during their lectures. We also had many viewers not affiliated with any institution, who were simply curious about the project.

As a consequence, a new form of education has come into being: live-broadcast, interdisciplinary and unconventional. The broadcast was conducted by the crew of the first balloon, who focused on observing the surface of the Earth. The crew from the second balloon dealt with analyzing the atmosphere, and the samples they collected will be presented during the upcoming conference at the Faculty of Biology at the University of Warsaw.

The number of people watching us directly and via online broadcast exceeded our expectations; moreover, numerous people decided to take part actively and prepare their own exhibitions.

Dear Friends

According to the forecasts, tomorrow on the 17th of October, 2017 at about 3 p.m. (1 p.m. GMT, Barnaul +5h, New York -6h, Los Angeles -9h), we are expecting good conditions for the balloon flight over the city. The direction and speed of the wind are not yet stable, but we hope for the best.

Stay tuned!

Just as we informed before, the balloon journey:

- will be directly transmitted online, with frequent updates of aerial photos taken at the most interesting points of the journey. The ground-based viewers are encouraged to arrange the photos into a gallery and exhibit it in the place of their choice. All those diverse personal galleries will be created simultaneously around the globe

- will present modern ways of Earth observation and atmosphere research

- will be the first interdisciplinary school lesson in history (subjects covered: Geography, History, Environment Education, Maths, physics, Chemistry Arts, Economy, etc.), conducted live from the sky. It is yet another methodological and organizational challenge for the project. Numerous schools from around the world have already decided to register and take part in the lesson.

Sometimes it happens that we can launch a flight right away, but more often we are forced to wait for good weather conditions. Even more so, when our parameters are very strict: set place for the take-off, precise flight direction of 20-30 deg. angular diameter that would enable us to fly over the city on the scheduled route for over ten kilometers with good speed, at set temperature, altitude and time – two hours before the sunset. Unfortunately, those conditions were not met neither in May nor in June. In those two months we had a lot of violent storms instead. Storms are beautiful, especially when graphically depicted, but they would make the flight over a heavily urbanized and turbulent area quite risky.

The early forecasts for two days lately (the 9th and upcoming 12th of June) made our hearts beat faster. Those days initially seemed to be perfect for our mission. But as those days were getting close the forecasts revealed that the ideal weather would disappear towards the evening, as seen on the wind forecast for tomorrow.

The Polish Post, Poczta Polska, has issued a special postcard to commemorate the flight, which you can send by our special balloon postal service. The postcards will be available shortly before the flight. On the front of the card you can see the panorama of Warsaw, with two balloons hovering above. The two balloons are in the project logo, however it is possible that one more balloon will take part in the mission.

We have been ready for the start for two weeks, our equipment and online transmission software have been tested a number of times, and the crews are waiting to be called to Pole Mokotowskie for the take off.

We are delighted to announce that POLSAT television company decided to support our transmission from the flight over WarsawI This means that apart from the transmission on our project website BALLOON-SCI-ART-GALLERY.pl, where you will be able to download unique aerial photographs, POLSAT will broadcast the footage from their own cameras installed on the balloon. In this way, you will be able to watch not only the city panorama below, but also what our crew is doing up there.

There is also a chance that POLSAT will organize a short transmission from a helicopter and we are going to see all of the balloons flying together.

The direct transmission from th entire flight will be broadcast at POLSAT NEWS and POLSAT NEWS 2 channels.

If you are fully registered and you confirm that you accessed and exhibited the photos after the transmission, you are going to get special bonuses:  

The readiness alert is planned for the 15th of May and from that day onwards we are going to monitor the weather. All fully registered participants (i.e. those who uploaded the photo of their exhibition spot and described their idea for it) will receive a notification about the flight via e-mail 24 hrs before the take-off. Another notification will be sent 5 hrs beforehand, to confirm the start.

After the winter break, Warsaw is starting to show off its urbanistic and natural beauty.

The postponed balloon flight is scheduled for May or June, when the weather conditions should be good.  

Our plan was to show the beauty of Warsaw at its best, however since the rainy days of gloomy autumn have already come together with first signs of winter, we decided to postpone the flight until May of next year, when the city will be in full bloom – literally. This change has many other benefits. We are going to spend the winter actively developing the project.

Unfortunately the weather all the time is not suitable for flight.

 Good meteorological conditions are not the only factor required for the flight, but they are the crucial one. We need stable wind from the eastern direction in the afternoon, with just a slight change of angle to the north-east. The wind speed should be around 3-6 m/s. Moreover, there has to be no rainfall, which unfortunately appears in weather forecasts quite frequently now.

Still, when we finally manage to take off, it will be the most unusual of journeys and landscapes!

We wanted to show how beautiful Warsaw is, green in the summer or, as it is now, golden and red in the autumn. The balloons and the crew are ready, however this year's climate and weather conditions, especially the lack of proper wind, have not been in our favour for quite a time.

The balloons will be ready for the take off on October 13th, however the flight might be postponed due to weather conditions and southern wind, which we patiently await. Patience is essential for this project's success.

When the chance to launch the balloons arises, we will inform you about it on our website one day before the start. The registered users will additionally receive individual notifications.

Registration allows you to participate in the project not only by accessing the mission photos, it also enables you to post the pictures of your own gallery, and to present your works in the World Gallery.

This year, we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the civic-scientific Project Warsaw, the 10th anniversary of the City Knowledge Academy, the 10th anniversary of Varsavianistic Studies, and we are in the midst of the 200-Year Jubilee of the University of Warsaw and the 110th birthday of the Warsaw School of Economics and 110thbirthday of the Academy of Fine Arts. In honor of all those events, we plan to organise in October a joint flight of three balloons over the city of Warsaw