Antarctic Total Solar Eclipse 2021

From the photographer: “When our Antarctic eclipse expedition cruise was cancelled last minute due to COVID, I was already in Argentina. I looked at any possible chance. Thankfully I was able to join an eclipse flight after a lot of effort and also invaluable help from flight organizing team. I flew from Buenos Aires to Santiago on the evening of 2021 December 2, joined the group on the 3rd to fly to Punta Arenas in the southern tip of Chile. From there, two B787 planes took off, flew in tandem for a round trip of around 6 hours, intercepting the Moon’s shadow somewhere south of South Georgia at 0405 GMT+3 for 1 minute 55 seconds, and then land back to Punta Arenas.

I was luckily watching the eclipse at one of the windows of seat 1A, working next to astronomer Jay Pasachoff team from Williams College. Apart from the eclipsed Sun, the dark lunar shadow moving from left to right was a highlight, and also Mercury shining only 3 degrees to the right of the eclipsed sun, at a bright magnitude of -1. Click the second photo for a wider-angle view.”