(Reuters) Joakim Sommer, Armando del Rey, Marco Waltenspiel and Georg Lettner paid a tribute to the celestial event this week, flying over La Palma in the Canary Islands where the sky is considered the cleanest in the North Hemisphere for astronomic observation.
The four jumpers joined the Perseids, a prolific meteor shower usually peaking in August. That mid-August night, up to 500 meteors were observed per hour. In fact, the visibility of the Perseids – a stream of debris stretching along the orbit of the comet Swift–Tuttle – was five time more intense than usual this year.
Sommer (Norway), del Rey (Spain), Waltenspiel and Lettner (Austria) jumped from an altitude of 1,800 meters and flew at a speed of 170 km/h above the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, where the world’s biggest optic telescope, the Gran Telescopio de Canarias, is located. They achieved this complex flight in total darkness, wearing LED wingsuits.
“The experience has been amazing,” said Sommer. “It literally felt like I was in a videogame. I was in this black tunnel and there was nothing else besides all those billions of stars in my face. It was a really unique visual because you could really feel the speed, but you have no other surroundings. You are just in pitch black; it is like you are out there in the outer space. It’s crazy, it was literally crazy.”
The jump above “La Isla Bonita” (as La Palma is also known) took place from the aircraft T-21 thanks to the Air Force, the Canarian Astrophysics Institute and La Palma’s City Hall.
After a massive fire hit the island these past days, the jumpers wanted to show support and gratitude to those who’ve helped rescuing and extinguishing – so they said GRACIAS (thanks) the best way they could.