You Could Believe That The Picture Below Was Taken By NASA,

but not so, it and others like it were taken by amateur astro-snapper Colin Rich, buying a £30.00 digital camera purchased on Ebay he encased it in foam, strapped it to a 3 foot diameter weather balloon with duct-tape and floated it up into the planet's stratosphere, also part of the package was a timer to take pictures every few moments and a GPS to track where it landed,

the 6 year old Canon Powershot A560 performed perfectly, Colin commented, 'rising at a steady rate of around 17 knots per minute, the balloon took around one and a half hours to reach the stratosphere - the area where the Earth's atmosphere stops and space begins, by the time the balloon reached 125,000 feet it had expanded by over seven times to around 24 feet, then it would have burst, the parachute would have deployed and then of course we would go and recover the Styrofoam casing,

what a fascinating science project and great pictures, just keep it and other attempts out of airline routes!