Millions of people visited the inner cities. A total solar eclipse Track today, praying for clear skies as the moon briefly blocks the sun from the sky.

But a few shadow chasers didn't want to risk the April showers, and instead booked a flight that promised an uninterrupted view. Above the clouds.

When Delta Airlines offered me one of its approximately 200 seats. A321neo A commercial flight from Dallas to Detroit on April 8th, I agreed to the opportunity to report on this date. the location The event — the last total solar eclipse to hit the U.S. mainland for the next 20 years, according to NASA. But it wasn't an immediate “yes” from me. As a chronic sufferer of motion sickness, the thought of combining vertigo with a work deadline at 30,000 feet seemed like the recipe for a truly memorable panic attack.

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But my mind kept going back to a conversation with Gina Samra, a solar physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He did research on an airplane during this time. 2017 solar eclipse And this time it will fly a telescope to examine the Sun's corona in infrared light. His trip on a Gulf Stream V jet operated by the National Center for Atmospheric Research will take him to an altitude of 45,000 feet.

Despite getting this rare opportunity, Samra admits that she hasn't actually seen an eclipse – not even once. In fact, instead of telling me about his encounter in full, he described the screams of other passengers as he ricocheted through the metal air tube with his eyes closed on a computer screen. Those three minutes of precious data captured in the dark gave him. A dissertation.

Did she feel remorse, I wondered, instead of acting in a climactic moment? Experiencing it For themselves?

“I don't think so,” he told me. “I definitely want to be in the air because there will definitely be an eclipse in the air. As for 'seeing' or 'seeing' it, that's somewhat under my control.”

A deep-seated desire for control? Yes, I can identify with that.

A total solar eclipse occurs around the world about every two years, but it takes time. 375 years on average For one of these heavenly coincidences to happen again in the same place.

The main event is milky light Corona of the sun. Because the surface of the Sun is a million times brighter, this mantle of superheated gas is usually ejected from the sky. Only this time Moon When the Sun is completely blocked from Earth, the corona emerges, extending out into space beyond the edge of the Moon.

Despite everything we've learned about the universe, there is still this mystery in our planetary neighborhood, as if it had always existed. Corona is very hot. than the sun itself. These mysteries are what prompt humanity to explore. They unite us in our longing for answers. They also remind us of our smallness—our basic fragility in the universe.

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Never one to turn down a reporting assignment, I packed my motion sickness pills and spent the entire weekend leading up to the flight into a frenzy. But if Samra can get a thesis out of her three minutes in the dark, surely I can write a good story out of four.

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As Delta passengers arrived at the gate Monday at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, the airline greeted them with a giant balloon arch and baskets. Solar eclipse safety glasses. Jane Walker tries to balance a pair of cardboard solar viewers on her dog Madigan, who travels with her and her husband John Walker. Jane, who came from Colorado, was happy that she would have a window seat.

“She's a good sharer,” John said.

“Not today,” he said slyly.

Julie Anderson, who brought her three sons, James, Justin and Jeffrey, said she started the trip for her family.

“I told their principal that we were remembering the school days for something epic, but I didn't say what it was,” she said.

For the eclipse flight, Delta worked with the Federal Aviation Administration to design a flight path with special turns in the air to give passengers on both sides of the plane the best views. The plane climbed, and the passengers broke down the complimentary snacks — sun chips and moon pies, of course — and looked at the flight tracker on the back of the seat to see where we were in the air. “We'll be blocking the eclipse over northeast Arkansas into southeast Missouri,” Delta meteorologist Warren Weston, who was on the flight, said.

After the so-called “First Contact” The main cabin slowly dimmed as the moon began to shake violently in front of the sun. Passengers who had clutched their eclipse glasses like roses began to put them on.

The mood changed. Suddenly, I felt a primal urge to thump my chest and drum as I scanned the sky with my eclipse glasses for bright lights. The pilot, Captain Alex Howell, said he would tilt the plane so the sun would fall into our field of view.

There it was. I found the sun, but not completely. I could see an orange sliver peeking out, shaped like a fingernail. There was no brilliant halo of white light.

“That's it,” said a woman from somewhere behind me. “We've passed it.”

I didn't know what to do other than laugh with Casey Stiles sitting next to me. Stiles told me he was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer a month ago. Since then, she's been traveling and crossing things off the proverbial bucket list. Seeing the lunar eclipse was one of them.

She wasn't disappointed—life is full of things you can't plan for. His mind was already elsewhere, thinking about his next excursion to Niagara Falls. She and her travel companion, Drew Hellman, were about to get into a rental car and begin the drive.

“I mean, what can you do?” she said. “It's not for not trying.”

You can watch Mashable Space Reporter Elisha Sauers on his eclipse flyby here. Mashable's X/Twitter or Instagram.