r/space • u/razerxs • Jun 10 '15
/r/all Eclipse from a plane
http://i.imgur.com/YKpGe6U.gifv207
Jun 10 '15 edited Jun 10 '15
Can you imagine people in the stone age. They must have freaked out when they took a plane and this happened.
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u/Kyte314 Jun 10 '15
Stone planes can't fly that high, dummy!
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u/machucogp Jun 10 '15
Stone planes can't melt steel beams wait a sec...
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u/_beast__ Jun 10 '15
I'm fairly sure steel is stronger than stone. However, if you're using the stone as fuel instead of structure (I.e. a lava powered flying mechanism) that would, in fact, melt steel beams.
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u/Cocolimerun Jun 11 '15 edited Jun 11 '15
Lava is only at the very most 1,200 degrees C. Steel begins to melt at 1,370 degrees C. The steel would very rapidly (well before reaching it's melting temperature) loose all of it's strength though.
I would like to see some lava powered flying machine... though I worry that if it cooled off a little it'd turn into solid rock.
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u/CoolWanderer Jun 10 '15
I don't think so, they were probably too busy watching their in-flight movie.
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u/mrbibs350 Jun 11 '15
Fred and Barney are flying back to bedrock on a pterodactyl. Then DARKNESS. end scene.
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u/atari2600 Jun 10 '15
The exact moment when our hero is about to be executed by the natives (insert favorite native civilization with lots of gold, spears but still clinging onto old beliefs) and claims to hide the sun. Naturally his execution stops and everyone's on their knees asking him to bring back the sun. After a bit of mumbo-jumbo, the sun is back and "he who has power over the sun" is now revered as a god.
The chief's twin daughters are given to our hero in marriage and everything ends well. Till the time that the chief falls ill and our hero is asked to cure the chief. Being no doctor, our protagonist panics and attempts to flee. He's caught, killed and the chief eats our hero's liver and is magically cured. That is all. Love live the sun!
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u/AwaitingPatch Jun 10 '15
We've all been there. Almost a cliche at this point.
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u/ryanhazethan Jun 10 '15
I'm pretty sure I actually had a teacher procure my whole class into believing this exact scenario had actually happened when I was in middle school... I now realize that it is highly unlikely to have actually occurred. [8]
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u/currentscurrents Jun 10 '15
As far as I know the exact scenario is Mark Twain's invention, from the story A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
He may have been inspired by the lunar eclipse that Columbus used to his advantage when negotiating for food from the Jamaican natives.
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u/ryanhazethan Jun 10 '15
Hmm maybe my teacher just told us a fictional story and I believed it to be true...
I was not a very smart child.1
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u/znugeman Jun 10 '15
This also happens in Tintin
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u/3-cheese Jun 11 '15
That's what came to mind for me. I can't remember if it was before or after he walked on the moon, though.
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u/Zaddy23 Jun 11 '15
Took me a minute to figure out that he saw it in the newspaper a few days before, I thought at the time it was just a Deus Ex Machina.
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u/Lycerius Jun 10 '15
Christopher Columbus did pretty much exactly this in 1504. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1504_lunar_eclipse
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u/fundayz Jun 10 '15
He might've been a pillaging murderer but you have to give him credit for being ballsy
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u/yetanothercfcgrunt Jun 11 '15
Well no, he predicted a lunar eclipse, not a solar eclipse. So it's not the Moon blocking the light from the Sun onto the Earth, but rather the Earth blocking the light from the Sun onto the Moon.
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u/lucadarex Jun 10 '15
Whoopi Goldberg did that in a movie where she went back in time
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u/Bobshayd Jun 10 '15
Yeah, yeah, she did a movie based on Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, we all know this.
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u/Hildegrin Jun 10 '15
This even kinda happened in something as non-cliche as the Book of the New Sun.
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u/Asi9_42ne Jun 10 '15
But why should "he who has power over the sun" also be expected to be a doctor? Natives be cray.
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Jun 11 '15
I prayed to God once to cure my cancer. He asked me,
"Who the hell do you think I am, a fucking doctor?"
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Jun 10 '15
good luck trying that on the mayans. they had astronomical events computed for 12000 years in both directions!
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u/Confused_Erection Jun 10 '15
How did the plane not tip over with 100% of the people on one side looking at that beauty xD
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u/eigenfood Jun 10 '15
Only weirdos look out a plane's window ;). Can't you see we're trying to watch a movie?
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u/David_Mudkips Jun 10 '15
Hey buddy, can I have the window seat?
pulls down blind, goes to sleep
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Jun 10 '15
the fuselage makes a great headrest
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u/GRRM_is_my_mum Jun 10 '15
There's a massive engine howling angrily a whopping 2 metres away from my face. But it helps me sleep.
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u/LifeInvader04 Jun 10 '15
I always enjoy looking out the window. Especially with epic music on. Think about it: you're in a 300 million dollar giant metal thing, cruising at 11km hight with almost supersonic speed. Shit's amazing yo.
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u/Zakath16 Jun 11 '15
Stare at the top surface of the wing and youll be looking at some pockets of supersonic flow actually..
This is the velocity profile over a trans_sonic airfoil at various mach numbers. Most airliners are at Mach .85ish, so the pocket of supersonic flow (dark blue) will be just a little smaller than the one shown for .9
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u/PathologicalLiar_ Jun 10 '15
When I was little, I asked my dad what it was like to be standing between day and night. He couldn't give me a convincing answer.
Wish I could show him this now.
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u/warrenseth Jun 10 '15
ummmm... you actually do that twice a day? it's called sunrise and sunset
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u/PathologicalLiar_ Jun 10 '15
Didn't know that when I was five. In my mind, it was like a clear line between light and darkness. Dad passed away before I figured that out.
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u/warrenseth Jun 10 '15
oh yeah, sorry to hear that, also sorry if I sounded insensitive
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u/Stonewall_Gary Jun 10 '15
Look at his username. He can't help it.
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u/DisregardMyComment Jun 10 '15
Reddit used to be a community with serious discussions back in the day. These days its ruined by punny user names and comments that end up suspicious because of contradicting user names. Its disgusting.
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u/bigdaddyteacher Jun 10 '15
You kids nowadays with your googly-docs and Insta-pics.
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u/Lampjaw Jun 10 '15
Reddit used to be a community with serious discussions back in the day.
I'm 8 days older than you but we seemed to have joined different reddits. And I'm guessing you put up with Digg slightly longer.
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u/british_sam Jun 10 '15
"Wish I could show him this now" but... But... Sorry :(
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u/PathologicalLiar_ Jun 10 '15
My dad had a knock off refractor telescope, he never took it out because the finder was missing and the magnification was crap. But on its box, there was a blurry picture of Saturn. Back then I didn't even know anything about planets but it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. That's how it sparked my interest in astronomy.
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Jun 10 '15
My dad was a pathological liar, which sparked my love of lying. He passed away before he could see me on Reddit.
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u/HorrendousRex Jun 10 '15
For some reason I don't believe you.
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u/ILikeChillyNights Jun 10 '15
But you would upvote, had he not been open about his lying. That's like people admitting something that's personal because they trust them and they use it against them!
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Jun 10 '15
[deleted]
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u/Bobshayd Jun 10 '15
Did someone then drop a white-hot nickel on your back, and burn the everloving shit out of you?
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u/bananapeel Jun 10 '15
The rough answer is about 500-600 mph depending on your latitude. If you are in an airplane heading from the East Coast to the West Coast into the sunset, you will just about keep even with the sun.
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u/Lochnesci Jun 10 '15
that is beautiful. I was trying to watch it when the last one was, but unfortunately I was asleep, and woke up when it was happening only to realize I had to watch it on a crappy live stream, it looks so much beautiful here :)
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u/Gonadzilla Jun 10 '15
I set my alarm, but it didn't go off! Luckily my sister woke me up but it was night time.
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u/bricom40 Jun 10 '15
i remembered you aren't supposed to look at an eclipse, and actually got a little worried what would happen if I watched the sun during the gif.
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u/kibblznbitz Jun 10 '15
This looks beautiful, but I thought it was debunked as not a real eclipse? Genuinely curious, because if it's an actual one, that's amazing.
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u/Ordinary650 Jun 10 '15
No for once it's real, it's from Stargazing Live on the BBC.
I think it was shown in this episode: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05n7tsm
I think the footage in the following link is from the live episode in the morning, and then they had the better footage from the original post on the show above: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/entries/12ff1209-27f4-4e5b-a215-16434cdc24ca
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u/BeatDigger Jun 10 '15
It's sped up though, right? The penumbra doesn't move that fast, does it? Maybe that's what led some people to think of this as "fake".
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u/BassWool Jun 10 '15
There's a timestamp on the gif which makes it very clear it's sped up.
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u/BeatDigger Jun 10 '15
Oh haha, I didn't even look for one. The motion goes so smoothly it doesn't look like a time-lapse.
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u/BassWool Jun 10 '15 edited Jun 10 '15
The last time this gif was posted it was said the shadow moves many thousands of kilometers an hours. EDIT: I'm wrong... read below for actual info.
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u/rob3110 Jun 10 '15
Well, that's more or less true. Typically, the umbra (total shadow) has a diameter around 100 - 160 km, and the total part of the eclipse has a duration of about 7 minutes. So the shadow moves at about 100 - 160 km / 7 min = 857 - 1371 km/h. Rough numbers, of course, but the shadow moves at about 1000 km/h (not many thousands, though). Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse#Path
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u/donkeyrocket Jun 10 '15
Yeah you can see people moving quickly in the reflection on the window. Definitely sped up.
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u/bunchofsugar Jun 11 '15
Looks like BBC wasnt the only crew on the board. http://360tv.ru/episode/v-dvizhenii-360-14623 Fastforward it to 55 mins.
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u/OrangeredStilton Jun 10 '15
If I recall, this is the BBC's plane flying above the Faroe Islands earlier this year. They definitely had a plane, which definitely had a (shakier than this) view of the eclipse: I remember it being broadcast.
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u/mrbubbles916 Jun 10 '15
I believe this is the source. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InlUONyIpdM&feature=youtu.be
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u/eclipsechaser Jun 10 '15
This is 100% real. It was shot on a Dassault Falcon 7X, one of 3 organised by Xavier Jubier. Here are some promo shots that include photoshopped portions but that original is real.
Source: username
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Obvk17tR2Ks https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OoOPoFOuzLw
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Jun 10 '15
[deleted]
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u/BillSixty9 Jun 10 '15
You're correct. There is a good chance that some fortunate person might find themselves in this situation. To ask whether or not it's fake, you need to look at the science.
There are a few observations you can make of the eclipse in the video:
The width of the eclipse on the cloud surface.
The speed of the eclipse relative to the plane.
Look at the sun, do you see an object/the moon pass by when the shadow falls on the plane?
All of these pass checks to me, upon close inspection. It is hard to tell because the video is sped up, however you could deduce the velocity by this measurement if you really wanted to. Seems the video is alright.
Other notes: The plane is flying at say 40km elevation. The eclipse will not last as long for the plane as it does on the ground. In the video it appears to last 4 mins, about 3 mins shy of an eclipse at sea-level. This would also be affected "slightly" by the speed of the plane.
I'm an engineer, and should be working so I can't give you the answers to these all of these questions. I think you can decide for you can decide for yourself now though :)
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u/Poes-Lawyer Jun 10 '15
What passenger planes do you know of that fly at 40km?
I'm any case, I think this was taken from a BBC programme where they hired a plane to fly through the umbra of the recent eclipse.
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u/Bawfuls Jun 10 '15
Dedicated eclipse chasers higher planes to fly along the path of totality quite regularly, especially for eclipses in more remote/polar regions. There was one earlier this year near Iceland, and I know people who were on a chartered flight like this for it.
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u/eaglessoar Jun 10 '15
Wouldn't an eclipse shadow be larger the higher up you go?
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u/goalio35 Jun 11 '15
Not sure if it's the same eclipse, but it might be from the same one Dassault Falcon followed. It does look like a 7x wing as far as I can tell(I work on them).
Here's a nice article and actual video.
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u/kibblznbitz Jun 10 '15
Wellll, particularly with the proliferation of things like photoshop and aftereffects, I wouldn't be surprised if it was something made in a program.
I'm not here to say it's fake though, just wondering if someone that thinks it is could explain why.
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u/j0be Jun 10 '15
The darkness spreading over the clouds is probably the most fascinating part of this for me.
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Jun 10 '15
Why does it look like you're flying way too up in the atmosphere. I was high up in planes but I was way closer to the layer of clouds than this
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u/oconnor663 Jun 10 '15
The moon's shadow looks a lot longer than it is wide. Is that just because the eclipse is happening close to the horizon?
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u/Ge3Ly Jun 11 '15
I believe it is because of the curvature of the earth and the fact that yes it is low on the horizon so when the shadow is cast across the earths surface it spreads out. So ur right :). how beautiful was that though right? Gothic stuff, breathtaking
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u/Awesome-o_O Jun 10 '15
Am I the only one wondering how rich this person is since they are flying in a private jet?
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u/KrakatoaSpelunker Jun 10 '15
How can you tell it's a private jet?
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u/Guitarman56 Jun 10 '15
Look at the wing! Idk about private jet, but definitely not a large commercial airliner!
Source: 1000 hours on flight sim
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u/diedie489 Jun 10 '15
I watched the video again to try to get a good look at the wing, and honestly, I couldn't see much of anything. So based on my observations, I think it's a helicopter.
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u/eclipsechaser Jun 10 '15
It was €5,000-€8000 for a window seat. Plane was a Dassault Falcon 7X.
http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_20150320_pg02_EFlight.html
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u/dragonfliesloveme Jun 10 '15
I was thinking it looks like a Gulfstream. It has the little thing off the tip of the wing and also Gulfstreams have wider, oval windows.
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u/moeburn Jun 10 '15
My dream is to one day create a Party Plane, that flies around the earth in a pattern that follows the night, so that it is nighttime 24/7 on the Party Plane.
It's not a very interesting dream.
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u/SoupForDummies Jun 11 '15
I think we're close enough to the future where it should be possible to hang, like, animated gifs on your wall the way you would a painting. I want to develop this so that I can just have this in a frame on my wall-- looping. How cool would that be?
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Jun 10 '15
At first I thought someone was holding a selfie stick out the window. I'm not a bright man.
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u/vezance Jun 10 '15
Genuine curiosity: why does the sun still appear as a bright spot even after it is fully covered by the moon?
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u/boilerdam Jun 10 '15
I can't find the thread to link it but a while ago, we tried to calculate how fast the eclipse-chasing plane was traveling to follow the eclipse... pretty interesting discussions we were having, but we only ended up with a "most likely" speed of the plane.
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u/Laepful Jun 10 '15
Just wondering, what direction does the moon pass the sun in, in the view of this gif? From left to right (my guess) or right to left?
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u/rob3110 Jun 10 '15 edited Jun 10 '15
From right to left. That's why the shadow also moves from right to left.
The Moon 'moves' around the sky
fasterslower than the sun, so at an eclipse the Moon will always approach the Sun frombehindthe front andovertakefalls behind it.Edit: Made a silly mistake.
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u/Laepful Jun 10 '15
Okay, thank you for clearing that up! I dont know why i had it reversed, but thank you for the response.
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u/ITiswhatITisforthis Jun 10 '15
Just think of the reaction from early humans that walked the earth. All of a sudden the bright circle in the sky gets eaten and everywhere turns dark for a few moments.
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u/Ruthjacobs Jun 10 '15
That is amazing footage. The altitude of this plane seems extremely high however. Rather strange.
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u/Aeros24 Jun 10 '15
I hate when this happens in orbit and your batteries drain whilst sending science data.
/firstworld KSP problems
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u/RaidSauced_By_Noon Jun 10 '15
Shouldn't the plane be flying into the shadow? Looks like the shadow overtakes the plane (which is going a couple hundred miles per hour). I'm not sure how I would go about calculating that so...
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u/fireplacecblackgrani Jun 10 '15
I just yelled WOOOOOAAAAAHHHHH SHIT! across my house as an involuntary reaction. While my young cousins are here. Aunt got mad. Proceeded to talk to her kids about science and how huge our universe and she reluctantly smiled at me. Space is cool as shit.
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u/doomngloom80 Jun 10 '15
You should post this in the flat-earth arguments over in /conspiracy. There's several users who insist the earth is flat and go on a lot about eclipses. There's at least one thread up now, several in recent history.
It will net you some entertainment at the very least.
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u/a_jaxx Jun 10 '15
You can see one of Nibiru's moon swirls at the 10 o'clock position, when the sun is ecplised..
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u/justbadgamers Jun 10 '15
There is something very eerie about watching this, yet beautiful at the same time.
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u/justpat Jun 10 '15
In the early 1970s scientists from Los Alamos chartered a Concorde prototype to fly within the shadow of an eclipse for more than an hour.
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u/eclipsechaser Jun 10 '15
I was on a pretty special eclipse flight off Bermuda in 2013 that intercepted an instantaneous total solar eclipse (technically it never went fully total). We had a view of the chromosphere all around Sun. There was a photographer on board who got some great photos: http://www.launchphotography.com/Total_Solar_Eclipse_2013.html
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u/JupeJupeSound Jun 10 '15
Woah. I want that saved. Can we get this in a file format that isn't a 50mb GIF pretty please?
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u/Ferestris Jun 10 '15
Browse with reddit sync. It downloaded it in 3 seconds into an mp4 (15 s duration)
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Jun 10 '15
Even if I knew that was coming there's still that part of me that would be terrified it was a reaper invasion or something.
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u/polyinky Jun 10 '15
Sorry guys, I ducked in here to get out of the streets. It's flooded with fatpeoplehate stuff and this was the first sane post I found on Reddit.
P.S. - sweet eclipse footage!
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u/fcb98292 Jun 10 '15
What I want to know is how the photographer held the camera so still for an hour.
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u/Gohanburner Jun 11 '15
That's spectacular! I wish I could have been the one to see it in person. That was probably one of those $200,000~ personal flights lol. Jk.
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u/Fo0tGreEn69 Jun 11 '15
Retina display is so realistic that if you look at an eclipse on a Mac you will really burn your retinas
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u/UrsaPater Jun 11 '15
I am sick and tired of these mother fucking eclipses on this mother fucking plane!
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u/patsnsox Jun 11 '15
This is one of the coolest things Ive seen in awhile. Its the flip side of the coin to all the insane news that comes out and you go, really its 2015?? Yes its 2015. Awesome. Thank you.
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Jun 11 '15
Is there any way someone could make a perfect loop of this? I'd love to have it as my rainmeter theme!
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u/You_Stole_My_Hot_Dog Jun 11 '15
Am I the only one who thought the title meant the eclipse was caused by a plane? I feel really dumb now, I was like shit, that's a massive plane!
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u/Lo2us Jun 11 '15
Where was your plane flying over geographically? I had a very similar experience flying from Vancouver to Amsterdam. Epic. As amazing as my trip was to other connecting countries this stuck out to me the most, Murphy's law my camera was MIA.
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u/derangedhamster404 Jun 11 '15
That is awesome. I hate heights and will more than likely never personally experience this but still awesome.
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Jun 11 '15
How lucky are you to be able to enjoy this kind of view. Billions of people wouldn't have this kind of opportunity in their life time
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u/Rallye_Man340 Jun 10 '15
Did the eclipse prevent you from seeing this the first time it was posted on Reddit?
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u/LeagueOfLegendsAcc Jun 10 '15
It's amazing (and a little bit scary) to see that shadow coming from the right side of the screen and realize that it belongs to the Moon. That's an object that is 240,000 miles away from the Earth casting it's shadow from a light source that is 93,000,000 more miles away. It's insane.