Stacey Suihkonen of Oakwood shot photos of the balloon as it crossed area skies Thursday, June 18.
Stacey Suihkonen / Contributed
A high-altitude balloon continues to fly over Dayton skies this week.
Stacey Suihkonen of Oakwood captured photos of the balloon as it flew over Dayton Thursday night, June 18.
The balloon has lights inside it that glow at night.
It was first spotted Tuesday above Dayton and was described as orb-like object by people who witnessed it in the sky. Data from FlightTracker24 indicates the balloon originated in Illinois, south of Pattonsburg.
Hovering at 66,600 feet in the air, the balloon exceeds the typical altitude of commercial aircrafts, which tend to cruise between 30,000 feet and 42,000 feet, as well as private jets, which cruise between 35,000 and 45,000 feet according to Epic Flight Academy.
While speculation on social media suggested the object could be a weather balloon or even a UFO, Julie Reed, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said it is not affiliated with official weather tracking and appears to be privately owned.
“I know that there are hobbyists out there that definitely launch high altitude balloons, though that’s something that’s very different than weather balloons,” said Reed.
Weather balloons are launched twice daily by the National Weather Service, and ascend to 100,000 feet in order to track temperature, dew point, pressure, wind speed and direction. They fly for about two and a half hours before rupturing and dropping back to the ground with a parachute. These weather balloons inform the weather models constructed by the National Weather Service.
“If you think of our atmosphere like being an ocean, you need to know more than what’s going on at the surface. You really need to know what’s going on higher in the atmosphere in order to be able to predict what’s going to happen at the surface,” Reed said.
Reed said that for some “balloon enthusiasts” the intention is to keep their balloons in flight for days at a time. This balloon’s precise purpose cannot be determined at this time, but Reed said that some potential goals of the flight could be to “do some little experiments” or “put a thing or two in the payload.”
To continue to follow the balloon’s progression, check out this flight radar.