Airborne observatory

Officer and photographer Albert William Stevens was one of the pilots on this expedition, he is sometimes called "the father of airborne astronomy".

[4] The next attempt was successful: an expedition of the Naval Observatory to observe the solar eclipse of April 28, 1930 on Honey Lake, California, with Vought 02U-1 plane equipped with a camera, recorded "the approach of the shadow".

[2] Army Air Corps and the National Geographic Society organized another expedition in 1932, to observe the eclipse of August 31.

Accompanied by Lieutenant Charles D. McAllister of the Army Air Corps, Stevens took the first photograph of the Moon's shadow projected onto the Earth during a solar eclipse.

[2] For the solar eclipse of May 8, 1948, National Geographic society organized several ground stations and two backup planes for a case of bad weather.

Observational instruments were installed on board, and the aircraft flew across Africa for 74 minutes in the Moon's shadow.

Planetary scientist Gerard P. Kuiper performed a series of Venus observations in near infrared[11] and Mars opposition.

Low developed devices that could be placed aboard aircraft, first using a Douglas A-3 Skywarrior from the United States Navy that carried a 2-inch telescope in 1965 and 1966.

It allowed to perform infrared astronomy; among other discoveries are "the first measurement of the internal energies of Jupiter and Saturn, far-infrared observations of the great nebula in Orion, studies of star formation regions and the bright IR sources at the center of the Milky Way galaxy", and also to determine the nature of Venus' clouds using a spectrosopy.

[2] The Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO), first flown in 1974, consisted of a 36 in (91 cm) aperture Cassegrain reflector carried aloft on a Lockheed C-141 Starlifter jet transport to perform infrared observations.

In terms of aperture, the largest aircraft-borne instrument to date is a 2.7 m (110 in) reflector telescope carried by a modified Boeing 747 for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) project.

NASA's airborne infrared observatories — the Learjet Observatory, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory and SOFIA — pictured next to illustrations showing how the size of each telescope approximately compares to an adult.
Scientists of Naval Observation with special camera to photograph eclipse from the USS Los Angeles dirigible. [ 1 ]
Two United States Air Force colonels inspecting the path of the eclipse of February 25, 1952 in preparation for an expedition to Africa.
Overview of wavelengths observable at different altitudes with an airborne observatory depicted.