{"id":738626,"date":"2026-08-15T08:04:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T08:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/738626\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T08:04:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T08:04:15","slug":"irish-scientist-describes-capturing-eclipse-from-plane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/738626\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish scientist describes capturing eclipse from plane"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Co Wicklow solar physicist has described partaking in an aerial mission to record images of this week’s eclipse as the highlight of her career.<\/p>\n

Dr Laura Hayes was part of a group of Irish scientists who were flown towards Iceland by the Air Corps to record images of a total eclipse and gather new information about the Sun.<\/p>\n

The group, including astronomers from the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS), worked with colleagues from the European Space Agency and Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics.<\/p>\n

The plane departed Casement Aerodrome and flew over Conamara continuing out into the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n

The destination, in the eclipse’s path of totality, was 540km west of Conamara.<\/p>\n

Once in the right area to capture the total eclipse, the plane descended to 10,082 feet and the team opened a window.<\/p>\n

This was so their specialised camera could get a clear shot of the eclipse without the distortion caused by filming through glass.<\/p>\n

\"A
\nThe group included astronomers from the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies<\/p>\n

Preparations have been under way for more than a year and the team had just two minutes to capture their data.<\/p>\n

Dr Laura Hayes, Assistant Professor at DIAS, held the camera on a specially designed gimbal.<\/p>\n

“A year of preparation has come down to these two minutes and I genuinely don’t think I took a breath for those two minutes of observation,” Dr Hayes said.<\/p>\n

Watch our video to hear Dr Hayes describe the experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Co Wicklow solar physicist has described partaking in an aerial mission to record images of this week’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-738626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}