This Mind-Blowing Photo Shows a Skydiver Transiting the Sun

Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy has captured a stupendous shot of a skydiver falling in front of the Sun. It was incredibly difficult — requiring precise planning and coordination — but the pair ultimately pulled it off on the sixth attempt.

Gabriel C. Brown is the skydiver in the photo; McCarthy’s friend and a popular YouTuber. “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 explains on his Instagram page. “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!”

McCarthy set up his array of telescopes in the Arizona desert and monitored the live feed while Brown hitched a ride on a light aircraft. Once McCarthy had located him, he told Brown to jump on the radio. The video of that moment is spectacular, and the finished photo is even better.

Part of the reason the photo is so special is that McCarthy captured free-falling Brown silhouetted against the Sun’s chromosphere. To bring out that incredible light, McCarthy captures the star in hydrogen-alpha light, which reveals its fiery details that cannot be seen in normal white light.

“It exceeded my expectations,” McCarthy says in an Instagram video while explaining that, after he captured the shot of Brown, he then made the image “super high-res” by shooting the Sun on another telescope and “assembled a mosaic of the entire Sun”, which he later matched with the features in Brown’s photo.

McCarthy shared a video showing the moment he told Brown to leap, the moment the photo was captured, and then the subsequent reaction of McCarthy and the team that was there with him in the desert. “I got it, dude!” McCarthy shouts excitedly in the video below.

McCarthy calls his creation The Fall of Icarus, a nod to the son of Daedalus in Greek mythology who famously flew too close to the sun on wings made of feathers and wax. McCarthy has made it a limited edition print available from his website.

McCarthy has been making a habit of capturing objects silhouetted against the Sun’s chromosphere: in September he caught a rocket blasting off in front of the solar disk.

More of McCarthy’s work can be found on his Instagram, X, Facebook, and website.

Image credits: All photos by Andrew McCarthy.