“It’s not easy to try and hide the Millennium Falcon!”
To the excitement of Star Wars fans everywhere, a photograph showing the Millennium Falcon and an X-wing fighter went viral after a flight school accidentally caught the shot this week.
Matthew Myatt, a simulations engineer at Airbourne Aviation flying club, was photographing one plane to another during a flight from the school’s base at Popham Airfield, Micheldever, in Hampshire.
“I didn’t know it was there, and we flew down and did some orbits,” Myatt said. “It was based around the old cruise missile silo. We didn’t realize what we had. I looked at the pictures on the viewer on the camera but the resolution wasn’t brilliant. It wasn’t until I got back last night and started going through the images that it just jumped out at me.”
Myatt said he had to go grab his son, a big Star Wars fan, to get him to verify what he was seeing.
“I was quite stunned. It was like, ‘wow’. That’s how the picture came about, purely by luck…It was one of those unbelievable moments.
“I grew up with Star Wars so I started jumping around,” he added.
The Millennium Falcon and X-wing fighter are on set at Greenham Common near Newbury in Berkshire.
Last tweet for the night. I spotted this at the weekend whilst #flying over Greenham Common. #StarWarsEpisodeVII pic.twitter.com/ypCNrZVDxl
— FlyMAC (@FlyMAC_Popham) September 9, 2014
A fan, Tom Bexx, wrote: “Newbury has become cool THE millennium falcon is here!”
Filming has also been done at the remote Irish island of Skellig Michael and at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire.
Star Wars VII, to be released December 18, 2015, will bring in newcomers as well as old faces. Joining Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and Kenny Baker will be John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Max von Sydow, Lupita Nyong’o, and Gwendoline Christie, as well as newcomers taken directly from the open audition, Crystal Clarke and Pip Anderson.