This is a classic example of a simple idea that no one had ever done before. The execution was complex, of course, and Andrew McCarthy is one of the most skilled astrophotographers. But once you get the idea, a number of people could have done it--but no one ever did.
Makes you wonder what other similar ideas are out there! You can bet McCarthy is already thinking some.
p.s.: My brush with celebrity is that I saw an Andrew McCarthy post on Quora when he was first getting started with astrophotography and gave him a few tips. Always important to remember that everyone was a beginner at one point: https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-pro-tips-for-astrophotog...
Your advice there is really valuable. Thanks for providing it. I've always wondered how to post-process my night images, and this is a really good guide for that.
Glad it helped! I definitely encourage you to continue practicing post-processing. There is a lot of magic there, and it's fun too.
> The silhouette of Brown is neatly demarcated against the bubbling surface of the Sun. His downward trajectory is perfectly framed between sunspots, active regions on the surface of the Sun that are slightly cooler than their surrounding areas. This is not just a pretty picture; it is truly a masterpiece
Excuse me while I go wash off the stench of AI-generated descriptions. The picture is very nice, though.
it's from iflscience which I would be shocked if there were more than 10 humans working for that site. it is so heavily loaded with ads/tracking that it gives no indication of giving a shit about its readers. i saw several parts of the site not loading due to uBO. just to see what was missing, i disabled uBO and after refreshing was presented with a blocking popup that says "our site depends heavily on" blah blah with a link to how to disable the blocker for the site. however, that's how i got to the modal was by disabling the blocker. the site was more functional with it enabled.
again, what would one expect from a site that has that feel of doing nothing than hoping to generate a viral headline just to infect those unfortunate to have actually followed the link
> This is not just a ...
Dead giveaway
Kagi just launched an AI flagging feature. This is something HN needs.
I don’t mind AI content. But I’m not going to read it carefully before commenting, and will double check it with real sources before changing my mind about anything.
Has AI content detection become at all competent?
From what I have seen, AI can detect AI better than humans. Humans are bringing baggage into it and vilifying legit writing techniques just because AI uses them. The whole concept that AI was trained on human writing, therefore uses well-known and proven writing techniques, but that those techniques are not exclusive to AI is utterly lost on some people.
The "dead giveaways" are not writing patterns, it is depth. AI will stay at a surface level when using argumentative writing patterns, whereas humans will add supporting information and connect the dots across sentences and paragraphs. It is the lack of connective language between thoughts and phrases that flag an AI.
I think we probably need to go the other way, a comment or article needs a ‘faceId’ check before submission to get human stamp.
Of course that brings a whole another set of problems.
That sort of thing is trivial to bypass and is a massive privacy violation.
HN can't even get it's web front end out of the 90s or meet basic accessibility standards.
Let’s bump up the AI even more, instead of “dead giveaway” you should have used hence.
AI-diom (n.) - an idiom which, while not exclusive to AI, is so frequent in AI output as to strongly suggest its use
It’s a very cool picture. Andrew McCarthy sells prints of these and other astrophotography on his website[0] although they’re always limited run prints. I bought the one of the sun with a SpaceX rocket for a friend who is into astronomy.
As a sales strategy, making his photos limited edition is a fantastic way to put the pressure on to actually buy instead of thinking about making a purchase indefinitely, even if from a convenience standpoint it’s a little annoying. Looks like right now the 16”x20” edition is sold out, but other sizes are still available for about two days.
I get the whole scarcity thing -- and I've even asked Andrew about this -- because if I'm willing to give him my money after saving up for it, but it sells out first, wouldn't he make more money if he took mine then?
But, I guess we just have to have an art budget with some money already set aside if we want to jump on opportunities when artists do this. I respect it, but yes it's a bit inconvenient.
PS. The full, uncropped shot is even more incredible IMO: https://cosmicbackground.io/cdn/shop/files/Overhead_black_li...
>wouldn't he make more money if he took mine then?
Marketing is far more complex then you're giving it credit for. Take the Factorio game, they don't have sales ever so the best time to buy the game is now. This both keeps people that buy things on sale even if they don't like it from getting it, and keeps other people that may wait for a sale and forget about it from not buying it now.
The same is true for limited numbers. Some people may want it and put it in the cart, but never actually buy it because there is no strong binary motivator. This motivator can actually increase sales quickly and ensure you dont hold inventory for long periods of time.
Also things are commonly bought in batches to reduce price. Your one painting later could either be much more expensive or require the artist to buy 50/100 units at once that risk becoming stuck inventory.
> because if I'm willing to give him my money after saving up for it, but it sells out first, wouldn't he make more money if he took mine then?
If the piece sold out, he made his money.
It's the same situation with $1000 theater tickets. You aren't the market.
If I were him I would put out a limited edition at a fixed price like he currently does, but then add $X0? $X00? cumulatively to the price of each additional unit sold.
> making his photos limited edition is a fantastic weay to put the pressure on to actually buy
FWIW, limited edition printing is absolutely standard practice for working artists who use media that can be easily or mechanically replicated, including photographers, printers, and digital artists.
The feeling of FOMO that it instills is indeed one reason, that benefits the artist, but the main reason limited editions are used is to add value to the art through scarcity, and this reason benefits you the buyer. People don’t want to be the first to find and buy something unique only to have it get so popular that all your friends and neighbors go buy the same thing, right?
The story of uniqueness is important. There’s a very real perception that art that can be reproduced indefinitely and is always available is cheap and not really fine art. Limited editions prints are trying, even if half-heartedly, to compete with painters and sculptors who produce something unique every single time. I say half-heartedly as a digital artist who prints limited editions, not as an insult. There is a slight degree of having cake and eating too. Limited editions are usually sized near the estimated sales limit, or such that the artist can move on to selling other work without feeling like they lost a big opportunity.
Limited edition print runs do lower the price of a print, but not as low as the cost of printing. If an artist does editions of size 1, they need to make enough money to live, and $90/print won’t do it if you only sell one. You can spread the profit across a run and give a group of people something for a low price instead of giving one person a high price.
If there's any difference between printmaking and photography, it's that printmaking requires one to physically print each item. There's a non-trivial amount of manual setup to do, and the process can take days.
Photography can be printed basically on-demand owing to the nature of the medium.
It doesn't mean that limited runs in photography are less valid, though. Once that print is editioned no reputable artist will just print more. (although there are ways around it, like different colorways) It definitely makes the item more "collectible".
A lot of modern prints aren't really made like that. They're just run off on (basically) nice commercial inkjets.
Sure that's not exactly fine art, but there's a big market for it, including things like collectors. Virtually all concert posters are printed this way, for instance.
> You can spread the profit across a run and give a group of people something for a low price instead of giving one person a high price.
Why not somewhere in between those options:
For example (made up numbers), sell 100 units at $100 after which the price goes up by $10 for each additional sale. So the 100th unit would be $100, the 101st unit $110, the 200th unit $1100, and so on.
Is the full-sun photo edited to remove the paramotor? I just realized it was in the video shot - the head-down dive “tracking” position of the skydiver in the video happens only a few frames after jumping, only for a few frames, and after that he’s tumbling a bit against the sun, with the paramotor still visible. I’m guessing even if the video and still were two different cameras, they wouldn’t have been far enough apart to catch the skydiver without the paramotor?
In the behind the scenes video the photographer makes an offhand comment that yes, he was going to take the silhouette of the skydiver (and maybe some of the immediate surroundings) and composite it with a mosaic of sun images taken around the same time (but without the paramotor present).
Apparently it took multiple tries to get this right. It is possible that the video is from one of the earlier failed attempts.
On a Reddit thread somewhere, the OP mentioned the sun is taken as a mosaic, where the picture taken with just the person is a very small FOV which excludes the paramotor.
Watching the video, the difference between the actual frame captured and the manipulated stacked image that's being presented is quite stark.
Related. Others?
I captured my friend transiting the sun during a skydive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45919692 - Nov 2025 (12 comments)
Be great to have the same shot but in front of the moon. Photos would make a stunning pair!
I sort of like it upside down, power of ra.
"what comes up must come down" -- Icarus
"That's not my department" said Wernher von Braun.
Am I right in thinking he flew up there in a paramotor and then jumped off it? What happened to the paramotor? It just crashed in a random place you have no control over?
According to the article there was a pilot in addition to a skydiver.
There’s a video of the jump in the article. You can kinda see the pilot in the paramotor flying away, as the jumper leaves.
LOL - the deeper mythological meanings are quite applicable (!)
What meanings, a reader might ask? First to say, art and mythos can have layers of meanings..There is no "right answer" exactly. think for yourself a moment about "falling" "The Sun", "a son", endeavor, catastrophe, and add knowledge or fate as you see fit.
