Astrophotographer snaps skydiver falling in front of the sun

Makes you wonder what other similar ideas are out there! You can bet McCarthy is already thinking some.

p.s.: My brush with celebrity is that I saw an Andrew McCarthy post on Quora when he was first getting started with astrophotography and gave him a few tips. Always important to remember that everyone was a beginner at one point: https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-pro-tips-for-astrophotog...

Doing that kind of flight at night (makes sense for lidar! not so much for photo..), against a clear sky with at least some stars, and stacking the resulting photos, would give you a grid pattern of green/red/white aircraft running lights in front of the heavens.

There are examples of planes silhouetting the sun or moon. There are examples of the ISS. There are examples of planets (Mercury/Venus) crossing the sun, not the moon (obviously). I think someone else mentioned rockets being captured too.

People have also done similar with the moons of other planets. And of course that's how exoplanets have been discovered by looking the effects of a planet crossing between our line of sight of its host star.

https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1611128761776492544/

https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1479541092693381120/

https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1837219848478412935/

https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1968658340679921925/

https://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Statio...

https://www.universetoday.com/articles/spectacular-image-sho...

Just so we don't all think one person is the only one to do this

My personal definition of "genius," is someone who sees things from a different angle, and can express it in terms we can implement.

It's not doing well on IQ tests; It's that ability to think "outside the box," and, crucially, to express that vision in terms that us normies can use.

Turning that back to HN. You may have an amazing startup idea, but you can't do it alone. You need to convince people to join your team, investors to give you funding and customers to buy your product. Yes, even scientists need to be good in sales.

I always did well in IQ tests, but I tend to look at things the way most folks do.

> This is not photoshopped. That’s really a person falling in front of the Sun.

I haven't watched all the videos. From the Reddit thread, it sounds like it was photoshopped (using that as a generic term for photo editing with a computer) but in a way acceptable to the astrophotography community. I don't understand where those limits are: somewhere strictly between cropping the photo and photographing the skydiver in front of a white screen before pasting the silhouette into a picture of the sun.

He'd simply respond with "But you didn't, did you?".

I think that Hirst had a point.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physical_Impossibility_of_...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45951713

Sure, all of the elements were captured, but not in a single image released as the final image. If you look at a search for “solar transit”, none of them have as much detail in the sun as this one. That’s evidence of comping the sky diver onto his mosaic. It’s similar to when people come in a full moon over itself when captured in a wide angle image. Yes, the moon was there and it is just updated with something with more detail and better exposure, but it’s not a single image possible to capture without comping. Maybe it’s not as obvious to someone less familiar with astrophotography, but that just makes the sin that much worse.

At the end of the day, it’s a great artistic shot, but it nothing more than the same level of effort to make a modern Marvel movie

Then again, I'm also one of those people who thinks duct taping a banana to a wall is also not art.

Standard wide area ortho photo collection can be done with a series of parallel lines, as long as there's enough forelap/sidelap between photos. Same for standard wide area lidar collection.