Photographer Takes One in 1.7 Million Photo of Airplane Transiting the Sun
Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy captured a rare photo of a Boeing 737 transiting the Sun after taking 1.7 million images over six days. This achievement highlights the challenges of astrophotography, particularly when tracking unpredictable objects like airplanes. McCarthy's final image not only showcases the plane but also features two solar prominences, making it a significant capture in his career.
- ▪Andrew McCarthy took 1.7 million photos over six days to capture a Boeing 737 transiting the Sun.
- ▪He optimized his setup specifically for airplanes, which are less predictable than other celestial objects.
- ▪The final image also captured two solar prominences, adding to the significance of the photograph.
PetaPixel files mainly under photography. We currently carry 92 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | PetaPixel |
| Canonical URL | https://petapixel.com/2026/05/26/photographer-takes-one-in-1-7-million-photo-of-airplane-transiting-the-sun/ |
| Publication time | Tue, 26 May 2026 11:35:04 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-26T11:37:48.652Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-26T11:37:48.652Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | yPt6RRDbUzXk |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Photographer Takes One in 1.7 Million Photo of Airplane Transiting the Sun May 26, 2026 Matt Growcoot ‘The Traveler’ by Andrew McCarthy. Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy had to wait for six days and 1.7 million photos before nailing his latest masterpiece: a Boeing 737 transiting the Sun. freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: "PetaPixel_728x90_ATF_Desktop", slotId: "PetaPixel_728x90_ATF_Desktop" }); freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: "PetaPixel_300x600_300x250_320x50_Mobile", slotId: "PetaPixel_300x600_300x250_320x50_Mobile" }); McCarthy says his photo, which he calls The Traveler, highlights the patience required to get results in the field of astrophotography.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at PetaPixel.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from PetaPixel
