Photography

Fly me to the moon: Photographer snaps aircraft using telescope

Shot of Ryanair plane ‘blasting across the sky’ taken from Dunksink observatory ‘was complete chance’, says Jeremy Rigney

Fly me to the moon: the Ryanair plane captured by James Rigney from Dunsink observatory. Photograph: Jeremy Rigney

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Glen Murphy
Sat Jan 20 2024 - 09:00

A PhD scholar has unintentionally snapped a one in a million shot of a plane against the moon.

Jeremy Rigney used the Dunsink facility’s 8-inch Celestron telescope with a Canon digital camera to capture the moment on Thursday afternoon.

“I had 10 minutes before I had to do something else,” Rigney, a scholar at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies’ (DIAS) Dunsink observatory and Armagh observatory and planetarium, said.

“I had the camera set up to an app on my phone with a remote shutter so it wouldn’t shake ... I hit the shutter and I see this flash of the plane [in the preview]. I looked up and there was the flight going across the moon, blasting across the sky.”

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He used the Dunsink facility’s 8-inch Celestron telescope with a Canon digital camera to capture the moment on Thursday afternoon.

The flight that happened to block his lunar view was Ryanair FR2970 heading to Tenerife from Edinburgh and was identified by one of Rigney’s colleagues. The aircraft was flying some 11,500m above the ground at the time.

“It was complete chance that the plane was there at that time when it was lit by the sunset ... a complete bonus,” Rigney said.

“This was made all the easier by the fact the DIAS has Dunsink observatory ... to have that opportunity is pretty special.”

The photo is also featured on page three of Saturday’s Irish Times.

More information about Dunsink observatory and its open nights can be found at dunsink.dias.ie.

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