The Serene Majesty of the Shadow of the Moon

Oh, this is glorious! Todd Kelly points me to this drone video of the Total Eclipse of the Sun, August 21, 2017, as seen from the banks of the Payette River in Cascade, ID, where my cousins and I also were present. Kelly has ID'ed the airliner in the photo as Southwest 5877 from Spokane, WA to Phoenix, AZ. The drone lifts off from about (44.496788°, -116.031189°). Our group was located about 1.1 miles away, at (44.512510°, -116.033214°). Our group is in the the field of view (but lost in the darkness) from about 2:42 to 2:49. Best video ever!



Kelly says:

We were in Cascade on an “Epic Eclipse Expedition” on a private estate adjacent to Trinity Pines and on the banks of the Payette River.

We identified the aircraft in your photo—which also appears in our book and video—using Radarbox24.com:

Southwest flight 5877 from Spokane to Phoenix. Surprisingly, no photos of Totality taken from this flight have been found anywhere online.

Aloha from Kauai 🌴

Total Solar Eclipse 2024 is coming! (Does it pass through Oklahoma this next time??) The book reference appears to be here.

Kelly adds:

My seventeen-year-old (at the time) nephew, Richie, from St. Maries, Idaho, made this remarkable DJI Spark video after only a couple of lessons the day prior to, and a “dry run” the morning of, Eclipse day.

We decided not to show the eclipse itself because of the Spark’s too wide angle lens. I asked only that Richie fly the Spark to 500ft and pan the horizon for the “360 degree sunset” during Totality.

“No pressure, Richie, but please get this video perfect in one take.”
Richie delivered like a pro. In fact, he gracefully dipped the camera and changed direction during Totality while having the presence of mind to view Totality for himself.

Most impressive is that Richie knew how to move both axes of this two axis gimbal camera simultaneously in order to achieve cinematic fluidity. I did not show him how to do that. Maybe it was the video games or the violin!

Richie now attends Harvard University.