I bet Bomber Bob had some good views during his Air Force career. I was on a few night time air drops on C-130's, but I was sitting behind the pilot, copilot, and engineer, and i dont remember having much of a view of the stars. But I do remember that once we were in the combat zone, we weren't looking for stars!

 

The best cockpit views for me were in the B-52, because we flew higher than the C-130 most of the time - between 32,000 & 42,000 feet - away from a lot of the atmosphere. Besides the glorious Milky Way and naked eye Double Cluster, the Aurora Borealis was an amazing neon snake some nights. Precious memories for an old flyboy stargazer.

 

No, never from the cockpit. Only out the passenger window of a commercial airliner. But in those days, slow film prevented me from imaging the stars or Milky Way.

By the way, Bomber Bob, I did see the inside of a B-52H cockpit, but only on the ground during an ORI. That was back in about 1966.

 

ORI!!!

 

+1

 

For those wondering what ORI is, it's a military acroym for Operational Readiness Inspection. Something you don't want to fail!!!

 

I will be performing an operational readiness inspection (ORI) on my solar imaging equipment this May for the transit of Mercury, which will be a practice run for the even more exciting August 2017 total solar eclipse.

Wouldn't want to fail my telescope ORI.

Here's my upcoming transit of Mercury and solar eclipse setup as seen during the Mercury transit of 2006.