An
airborne observatory is an
airplane or
balloon with an astronomical
telescope. By carrying the telescope to a sufficiently high altitude, the telescope can avoid
cloud cover,
pollution, and carry out
observations in the
infrared spectrum, above
water vapor in the
atmosphere which
absorbs infrared radiation. Some drawbacks to this approach are the instability of the lifting platform, the weight restrictions on the instrument, the need to safely recover the gear afterward, and the cost compared to a comparable ground-based observatory.