A ghostly figure has been seen hovering on the edge of space in eerie new photos.
New footage shared by a team of scientists and artists shows a silken figure appearing to dance and shift forms high above the Earth.
In some particularly chilling shots, the fabric can be seen wrapping around a humanoid body on the edge of space.
However, the origins of the ghostly figure have a far more mundane explanation.
The team, a collective known as the Dorothy Project, sent the "human silhouette" miles above the Earth in the name of art.
The project partnered with Taroni, an Italian silk-weaving company, for "Mission Taroni", which intends to provoke the "overview effect" in viewers, the name for the awe-inspiring experience reported by astronauts.
They also seek to examine the relationship between art and science and invites us to "rethink our relationship to creation" and "ask how, in shaping matter, we also shape our way of seeing life and our planet".
The Dorothy Project pointed to art and science being "intrinsically linked" at the height of the Renaissance, and said Mission Taroni seeks to renew a "lost dialogue" between the two disciplines.
The mannequin and silks designed by The Dorothy Project weighed only 700 grams
|THE DOROTHY PROJECT
To make the floating figure, the Dorothy Project built a lightweight mannequin and wrapped it in silk.
A weather balloon of biodegradable latex was then attached to the sculpture.
It was filmed used an Insta360 camera, painted with a thermal coating to protect it from the sun's rays and cold conditions.
The weather balloon reached approximately a third of the way to space, hitting an altitude of 20.5 miles.
The mannequin and silk wrappings weighed only 700 grams in total in order to ease its ascent to the upper edges of our atmosphere.
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The ghostly figure was made of Italian silk and designed in collaboration with Taroni
|THE DOROTHY PROJECT
Its light weight also allows it to comply with safety regulations over objects in space to minimise risk if they plummet to Earth.
The wires and rigging suspending the mannequin were edited out of the footage, to make it appear as if the mannequin floated high above Earth alone.
The sky above Mission Taroni appears dark despite being within the atmosphere, as 99 per cent of air molecules are below it.
A weather balloon can reach about three times higher than an average commercial passenger plane.
The figure was filmed using an Insta360 camera, painted with thermal coating to protect it from the sun's rays and cold conditions
|THE DOROTHY PROJECT
The Mission Taroni creators said: "By superimposing this ghostly silhouette onto the planet, our only habitat, and the infinite blackness of space, we create an image that transcends aesthetics and invites reflection on our place in the universe.
"This dizzying contrast between the ephemeral nature of the body and the Earth, the result of 3.5 billion years of evolution, reminds us of our cosmic insignificance as well as our collective responsibility toward living beings."
Last year, the Dorothy Project undertook "Mission Stratos" with the backing of the Canadian Space Agency and the French Space Agency.
For this, they constructed Dorothy 8, a specialised camera designed to capture high-definition 360-degree video from the stratosphere.
The project was founded in 2017 by artist and engineer Mathieu Baptista.