Here at Flightradar24 we’re big fans of anything in the sky and that includes astronomical photography, but we were pleasantly surprised when we came across Andrew McCarthy’s photo of the 30 August Super Blue Sturgeon moon. Taken in Arizona southeast of Phoenix, the photo captures not only the moon, but an aircraft passing in front of the moon.
My photo of the 2023 Super Blue Sturgeon moon. pic.twitter.com/qL3ZgojO7F
— Andrew McCarthy (@AJamesMcCarthy) August 31, 2023
A Flightradar24 user and twitter follower suggested that we might be able to help identify the aircraft, so we set to work. We contacted Andrew to learn from where and at what time he captured the image. After he told us he was in Florence, Arizona, southeast of Phoenix and took the photo at 10:30 pm local time we had enough information to open up Flightradar24 playback to try to find the flight.
Playback shows two aircraft near Florence, Arizona at that time. One is a Southwest Airlines 737-8 MAX flying from Austin to Los Angeles and the other a JetBlue A320 traveling from San Diego to Fort Lauderdale.
Fortunately, Andrew provided us with an enlarged image to show the aircraft details more clearly.
Capturing the plane was a complete accident, but worked out nicely in the composition so I left it in. I wonder if I can track down the pilot and let them know I got a photo of them? pic.twitter.com/QwSwUKy6f6
— Andrew McCarthy (@AJamesMcCarthy) August 31, 2023
Looking at the shape of the wings and—importantly—the configuration of the flap track fairings or “canoes”, we see an A320. We also don’t see the unique MAX Advanced Technology winglet present on the 737-8. Lastly, we know from the direction of the photo looking at the moon that the aircraft is traveling east.
Hello JetBlue flight 30!
Putting what we know together, we can say that the aircraft in the image is JetBlue flight 30. We reached out to JetBlue and they promised to pass along the photo to the pilots. A stunning shot from Andrew McCarthy, but certainly not his first. Check out some of his other amazing photographs of the cosmos on his website Cosmic Background.
