This is the first part of the ad. The second half for their Satellite T Series ULV laptops will come out next year. [Toshiba UK via Engadget]

Facts about the shoot:

• The shots were taken at a staggering 98,268 feet above the earth using Toshiba's own cameras
• To reach the altitude required and to conform with Federal Aviation Administration regulations, the weight of the rig had to be carefully managed to a weight of no more than four pounds
• Tied to the rig was a specially created full-sized model chair made of biodegradable balsa wood – the chair was made by a company called Artem and cost about £2,500
• Launch coordinates of the rig were - 119 degrees, 14 minutes by 40 degrees, 48 minute (12 miles North-East of the town of Gerlach, Nevada)
• The quality of the footage from the Toshiba IK-HR1S cameras was: 1920x1080 pixel count; 1080i @ 50hz; 100 Mbps
• The temperature dropped to minus 90 degrees when the chair reached 52,037 feet
• The chair took 83 minutes to reach an altitude of 98,268 feet where it broke and took just 24 minutes to fall back down to earth with the rig.

The four cuddly astronauts travelled on board the spacecraft for two hours and nine minutes, reaching the 19 miles high mark powered by a latex weather ballon made by the Space Flight club at Cambridge University. They were wearing special suits made by school children, which saved them from freezing at -63.4º F. No, I'm not kidding. The team was investigating what materials would protect the furrynauts better.

If you haven't melted by now, you are not human. And NASA, wake up and smell the coffee. We are losing another space race here. [Daily Mail]

These images will be part of Star Vistas, a book that will be published next year and will collect all their photos of space, taken since they met online four years ago. The two alien Peeping Toms started to collaborate online in 2004. Noel—a Photoshop wizard with an astronomy inclination—helped Greg post-process his images of M33, which is a member of our local group of galaxies along with Andromeda (M31, who they also got in their book) and our very own Milky Way.

Greg uses a 28 cm Celestron NExtar 11 GPS reflecting telescope with Hyperstar lens, an optical assembly that attaches to the telescope secondary mirror, turning it from a slow f10 to an ultrafast f2 astrograph. This system is not designed for the human eye, so he got a matching Starlight Xpress SXV-H9C one-shot color CCD camera.

To increase the performance of the camera, he had to get rid of the noise in the sensor, which is produced by heat during long exposure times. This is achieved by installing a solid-state refrigeration system, which lowers the temperature of the CCD to 55º F less than the ambient temperature.

In addition to this, there is a last ingredient in the recipe: Parker moves the dome in his observatory by hand ever half hour, to adjust to the rotation of the Earth, which results in a moving sky.

In other words: Magic. [Star Vistas via Daily Mail]