A black dot crosses the sun. It looks like a frame from science fiction, but it is Gabriel C. Brown skydiving right in front of the solar disk.
The image, taken in Arizona in November 2025 by astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy, took months to plan. Brown jumped from a small plane at an altitude of 1.070 meters while McCarthy waited 2.4 kilometers away with a hydrogen-alpha telescope capable of capturing the sun’s chromosphere. The pilot needed six passes to align the aircraft with millimeter precision, and McCarthy had only one real opportunity: repacking the parachute for a second attempt would have taken too much time.
When the silhouette appeared on his monitors, McCarthy shouted with excitement. He titled the photo ‘The Fall of Icarus’ and described it as the most convincingly fake-looking real image he had ever taken. So many people believed it was the work of artificial intelligence that he had to come out and explain, with evidence, that everything had happened in front of his camera.
