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Eclipse: the view from 40,000ft above the Pacific Ocean

The sun is obscured by the moon during a solar eclipse as seen from an Alaska Airlines commercial jet at 40,000ft above the Pacific Ocean.
The sun is obscured by the moon during a solar eclipse as seen from an Alaska Airlines commercial jet at 40,000ft above the Pacific Ocean. Photograph: Jim Urquhart/Reuters

Evgenya Shkolnik, a professor of astrophysics at Arizona State University, is not accustomed to getting high-fives from fellow passengers when she flies. But after standing up in front of a hundred or so eclipse aficionados, astronauts, astronomers, Alaska Airlines employees and members of the press on Flight 9671Y and talking about the scorching sun, she might as well have been Tom Brady coming out of the tunnel on Super Bowl Sunday as she made her way back to her seat in the 13th row.

The sun is obscured by the moon during a solar eclipse as seen from an Alaska Airlines commercial jet over the Pacific Ocean.
The sun is obscured by the moon during a solar eclipse as seen from an Alaska Airlines commercial jet over the Pacific Ocean. Photograph: Jim Urquhart/Reuters

“Astronomers aren’t celebrities – except on this flight,” she quipped.

Flight 9671Y was chartered out of Portland International Airport (PDX) by Alaska Airlines, with the promise that its passengers would be among the first to view the so-called Great American Eclipse – the first total eclipse to cross the contiguous Unite States since 1979 – about 1,000 miles off the northern Oregon coast. Soaring well above the clouds – public enemy No 1 to eclipse-watchers – at a peak altitude of 40,000ft and traveling over 500 miles per hour, the objective, as Alaska’s fleet captain, Brian Holm, put it, was to “sideswipe a car that’s traveling at 4,000 miles per hour”.

The car, in this instance, was the moon’s shadow, or umbra. Self-proclaimed “umbraphile” Dennis Cassia and his wife, Kimberly, had a plan to follow that shadow across the aisle as it made its way from one side of the plane to the other, but as the moment of totality neared shortly before 10am Pacific time, they scrapped this strategy, preferring instead to gawk at the “diamond ring”, a moment prior to totality when a small slice of the sun resembles a shiny bauble mounted atop the moon.

Whereas on the ground, eclipses immerse onlookers in a surreal waking darkness, the airborne effect is more reminiscent of dusk, bathing the clouds and ocean below in an orange-blue hue that looks like the most refreshing tropical libation ever concocted.

“I thought it was going to be darker,” said Joshua Shepherd, an 18-year-old biology major at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. He made the trip west with his sister, 26-year-old Jasmine Shepherd, after the pair produced a social media video that won them a seat aboard the flight.

Nasa astronaut Dr Michael R Barratt views the solar eclipse from the plane.
Michael R Barratt, a Nasa astronaut, views the solar eclipse from the plane. Photograph: Jim Urquhart/Reuters

For Joshua, seeing the eclipse from this vantage point was “a dream come true. Once the light parted from the darkness, you got to see just how powerful the sun is”.

Jeela Bright, of Gresham, Oregon, earned a seat along with her husband on the eclipse flight through a Rose City Astronomers Club raffle. The eclipse was “phenomenally beautiful”, she said.

She had summed up her passion for astronomy prior to takeoff: “Life is really chaotic down here, and I like looking up.”