An amazing photo shows a person seemingly skydiving through a vast backdrop of the Sun.
But instead of deploying generative AI or other editing trickery, the photographer behind the once-in-a-lifetime shot has the receipts to prove it’s very much real.
Arizona-based amateur astronomer Andrew McCarthy shared the now-viral image on Reddit, calling it the “most preposterously fake-looking real photo I’ve ever captured.”
The gorgeous image, fittingly titled “The Fall of Icarus” — and which you can buy as a print to support McCarthy right here — shows “my friend transiting an active region on the Sun in freefall,” he wrote in the caption.
In a behind-the-scenes video posted to his Instagram, McCarthy explained how he pulled it off.
He “set up a bunch of telescopes in the desert” and instructed his friend, YouTuber and skydiver Gabriel Brown, to leap from an ultralight aircraft perfectly positioned between him and the Sun.
“When the time was right, I told him to jump,” McCarthy wrote in the video.
Footage shows Brown let go of the aircraft while perfectly silhouetted by the glowing and ominously churning surface of the Sun. All the while, McCarthy took a stream of photos in the hopes of freezing the motion of his descent.
“I got it, dude!” McCarthy exclaims in the clip.
It’s a fitting time to capture the solar surface. Our star has entered its most active phase of its 11-year cycle, triggering fierce solar storms. This week, it unleashed the strongest solar flare this year so far, causing radio blackouts across Africa and Europe.
All of this solar activity also makes for a very different — but equally stunning — photo opp, in the form of “abundant” displays of auroras lighting up the night sky as far south as Florida.
More on amateur astrometry: A Huge Comet Is About to Become Visible in the Sky
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