By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | October 4, 2012

Astronomer Alex Filippenko shows hes ready for take-off in a jet fighter piloted by Lt. Mark Tedrow, one of the Navys elite Blue Angels team. Noelle Filippenko photo.

For the lucky few, soaring over San Francisco with the Blue Angels is the dream of a lifetime you want to sit back and enjoy. But for UC Berkeley astronomer Alex Filippenko, it was a teaching opportunity.

As he banked and rolled over the Bay Area yesterday (Wednesday, Oct. 3), he took the opportunity to videotape in-flight physics lessons he hopes to use in outreach to the public.

It was an out-of-this-world experience, he wrote in an email. We broke the sound barrier It was incredible!

The Blue Angels, the Navys elite flight-demonstration team, are in town to celebrate the annual Fleet Week.

Filippenko flew as part of the Blue Angels Key Influencers program, in part because of Filippenkos role in the research that led to last years Nobel Prize in physics. One of the other Key Influencers was local heroCapt. Chesley Sully Sullenberger, the famed US Airways pilot who landed a passenger liner in the Hudson River three years ago.

Filippenkos jet was piloted by Navy Lt. Mark Tedrow, who took Berkeleys well-known black hole expert through rolls and turns where he felt the effects of 6.2 Gs more than six times the force of gravity as well as weightlessness at 0 G and even negative Gs, all perfect conditions for experiments that will wow his Astro 10 students.

Besides being a heck of a lot of fun, there were so many interesting physical principles to talk about before and during theflight, he told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter.

Read more from the original source:

Astronomer jets up, up and away with Blue Angels