When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.Credit: Andrew McCarthy/cosmicbackground.ioIt’s called “The Fall of Icarus,” and it is the hottest new photo (literally) from astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy.Skydiver and friend of McCarthy, Gabe Brown, can be seen falling across the face of the sun in the new photograph, which the two built around a seemingly impossible idea around an alignment of freefall, pilot precision and high-definition solar photography.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement”I didn’t know if it was even possible,” McCarthy said in an interview with Space.com. “There were so many factors to consider.”The concept for the photo came about after McCarthy shot the solar transit of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch using a similar hydrogen-alpha (h-alpha) filter — a wavelength that reveals the sun’s chromosphere and fine magnetic structural details. McCarthy and Brown brainstormed other solar transit photo ideas during a skydiving trip, which quickly led the two to wonder if that transiting object could be a person.The mechanics of such a shot were not a simple point-and-shoot endeavor. McCarthy said the first hurdle was understanding whether the sun’s altitude would allow both the aircraft and the skydiver to intersect a telescope’s field of view in a controlled way.”Depending on how high the sun is in the sky, the dynamics of it would completely change. A plane can only transit the sun very, very briefly if it’s high in the sky, just thanks to laws of physics. And if it’s low in the sky, then the skydiver doesn’t have enough safety margin to pull the chute. So we did some math, and we figured out there was a sweet spot in the morning where the sun was low enough that we could coordinate the aircraft, but high enough that the skydiver could still pull the chute and land safely, and also, importantly, the skydiver would be within focus.”AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementMcCarthy said that optical physics added another hard constraint. That’s because the telescope’s depth of field narrowed the altitudes where Brown could appear sharp in freefall.The wide shot of Gabe Brown transiting the sun in ‘The Fall of Icarus.’ | Credit: Andrew McCarthy/cosmicbackground.io”There’s a depth of field considerati …
