THE SUN — Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy set up multiple telescopes in the Arizona desert earlier this month to capture an image he believes nobody has seen before.
And given how it has captivated the internet, he’s probably right.
“The Fall of Icarus” — an image he captured on Nov. 8 — depicts a silhouette of a man falling through the immense background of the sun’s chromosphere. As McCarthy detailed on social media, the man falling through the sky is YouTuber Gabriel Brown, a skydiver who jumped from a light aircraft after positioning himself between McCarthy’s telescopes and the sun.
Pulling off the shot, however, was more than just luck. It required detailed planning to make sure that everything aligned perfectly.
“We had to find the right location, time, aircraft and distance for the clearest shot, while factoring in the aircraft’s power-off glideslope for the optimal sun angle and safe exit altitude,” Brown explained in an Instagram post. “Then we had to align the shot using the opposition effect from the aircraft … and coordinate the exact moment of the jump on three-way comms.”
There were also a “myriad of malfunctions” that led to the shot nearly not happening, he added. Brown had to jump from about 3,500 feet in altitude and approximately 8,000 feet from the telescope cameras for everything to work, and it took several attempts to line up the shot, McCarthy told Live Science.
He also used a hydrogen-alpha filter on his telescopes to capture the dramatic details of the sun, the New York Post points out.
“You can see the excitement on my face in the videos. Seeing it perfectly captured on my monitors was exhilarating,” McCarthy told Live Science.
The final result is breathtaking, gently reminding us about the vastness of the universe.
