UNITED KINGDOM (CNN) -- Teenager Adam Cudworth is enjoying some time in the limelight after he used a weather balloon and a secondhand digital camera to take pictures at the edge of space.
But it wasn't as easy as you might think.
"So when I initially was faced with the challenge, I had a whole range of things to think about," he told CNN. "I had the balloon, the parachute, the payload. How's it all going to fit together?"
But it worked, and Cudworth's reward was thousands of digital images showing the entire trip, beginning with the launch in his neighborhood, and continuing all the way up to altitudes so high you can see the curvature of the earth.
"There were a whole lot of blurry photos from the spinning because it was a particularly windy day that I did it on. Especially at the lower altitudes," he said.
But many of the pictures were crystal clear.
"The clarity of some of the ones on the ground – the ones that captured my local city on the ground were spectacular." "I thought, ‘Wow, this is good.'"
The balloon exceed heights of over 33,000 meters.
"What really struck me is you can really see the curvature of the earth and the blackness of space," he said. "You can see the different layers of atmosphere quite clearly."
Despite the impressiveness of the project, Cudworth said he succeeded with the simplest of materials.
"So the camera itself is secondhand," he said. "It's refurbished. I bought it of eBay a couple of years ago for just 30 pounds. Just 30 British pounds. It's just a Canon A-570. It's sort of a standard point-and-shoot camera."
Cudworth said he calibrated the camera so that it would take one picture every 10 seconds upon launch, and an image every 30 seconds later into the flight.
"But I still ended up with over 1,000 photos," he said.
Cudworth said it's a hobby for him – but he hopes this project leads to more high-flying adventures.
"Achieving this – it's made me certainly want to go and really explore the other projects I have in mind. And really just see where it leads at the end of it. If it leads to NASA that would be absolutely fantastic."
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