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The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is a yearly balloon fiesta that takes place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA during early October. The balloon fiesta is a nine day event, and has around 750 balloons. The event is the largest hot air balloon festival in the world. In addition, it is widely considered the most photographed event in the world. 

One of the biggest events of the fiesta is Mass Ascensions, where all participating balloons launch in two waves, filling the sky with hundreds of balloons at once. Many non-traditional, uniquely shaped balloons are launched at the same time during Special Shape Rodeo. Some of the most famous shapes include a milk cow, a wagon coach, twin bees, and many others like soda pop cans and animals.

At night, large numbers of balloons are illuminated by their propane burners. They stand static and do not take off during these events. The Glowdeo is a night glow for the special shapes balloons.

Part of the reason for the success of the Fiesta are the cool Albuquerque morning temperatures in October and the Albuquerque box. The "box" is a set of predictable wind patterns that can be exploited to navigate the balloons. At low elevations the winds tend to be southerly, but at higher elevations they tend to be northerly. Balloonists use these winds to navigate in a vertical box: they ascend slightly from the launch park, move south, ascend further, move north, descend, and repeat the box or land back in the launch park or quite nearby.

Balloon Fiesta Park is located at 5000 Balloon Fiesta Parkway NE, Albuquerque, NM 87113

Retrieved and modified from Wikipedia on May 31, 2010. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this text only under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License.