Our typical flight schedule goes something like this: board plane, put on fuzzy socks, curl up under a blanket, and pop on an eye mask until we land, groggy and ready to stretch our legs. But we would have happily forgone this routine had we been aboard flight 870 from Anchorage, AK, to Honolulu on March 8.
The flight, which left at 2 p.m. Alaskan Standard Time and arrived at 7:16 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time, adjusted its original scheduled time of departure so that it could intersect the total solar eclipse's path of totality — something you definitely do not want to sleep through.
The idea to catch the exact moment that the moon aligned with the earth and sun came from Joe Rao, an associate astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium. Rao, along with other eclipse chasers, boarded the flight with GoPros and an insane amount of excitement. It's all hilariously captured in this footage from the flight.
Laugh all you want, but hearing these guys geek out makes us just as thrilled to see the spectacle. Check out the video, below, and start making your plans to see the next total solar eclipse live when it occurs in August 2017.
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