So this is a
"special edition" post. I wanted to share this story with you,
since I find it so interesting. You may have seen in the news this week
that there was a total eclipse of the Sun over parts of Indonesia and
the Pacific on March 8/9. While many people went to Indonesia for it,
Joe Rao had a different idea. Joe works as a meteorologist for News12 in
New York. He is also very much into astronomy, and especially total
solar eclipses. He did some research, and noticed that an Alaska Airlines flight between Anchorage and Honolulu would fly through the
path of totality- but the timing was off. So he contacted the airline,
and after much persistence (over several months!), he convinced Alaska Airlines to change the
departure time of the flight on March 9 from the usual 1:35 local time
to 2:00 local time, so that the aircraft could be in the narrow shadow
of the Moon at just the right time. Yes, you read that right. And here
is the stunning result:
And a story about it for more details:
By
the way, as far as I know, the video was filmed by Mike Kentrianakis, another eclipse enthusiast. You may read the comments on
both the YouTube page, as well as on the Space.com story about how the
audio on the video is annoying. (Actually, some of the comments on the YouTube video are NSFW and inappropriate!) Well, apparently these people
commenting have never seen a total Solar eclipse before! Indeed,
totality is so spectacular that it can cause people to babble excitedly,
like Mike was doing!
I'll
put it this way- let's say you were a sportscaster for a baseball team.
This is your hometown team, and you've followed them all your life, and
you've been broadcasting for them for over 20 years. This team has
never made it to the World Series before. But now, they've made it. It's
game 7, bottom of the 9th, down by 3. A player on your hometown team
hits a grand slam to win the championship. Certainly a sportscaster in
that position would be very excited! THAT'S the kind of mindset Mr.
Kentrianakis would have been in.
An amazing story, for sure!
