‘The Fall of Icarus’: How the remarkable shot was captured

Standing in Arizona’s largest dry lakebed, Wilcox Playa, astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy steadied himself as freight trains thundered by, threatening to blur the shot that took months to prepare. The crowd around McCarthy watched one morning last month in tense silence as he attempted and failed during six passes of a plane overhead to get the perfect image.
High above, his friend Gabriel C. Brown was perched on the edge of his plane seat, waiting for the signal to leap. “Originally, we we’re like, if we mess up the first attempt