Photos of Planes and Contrails (That you took yourself)

A couple from this morning. Here's an "on-off" trail, maybe an aerodynamic contrail in the centre, although it is a tri-jet:

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And two very contrasting trails. The persistent one was left by an ERJ-175 which was completing its climb to 35,000 feet just about overhead. The non-persistent trail was an A320 cruising just 1,000 feet higher.

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Could the additional engine power from the climbing phase of flight be responsible for the persistence of the trail, I wonder, or is it simply the difference in conditions between 35,000 and 36,000 feet?
 
Expect to see plenty of claims of "heavy spraying" over the southern UK today. Pretty striking skies this morning:

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Here are the two planes adding the next X to the "grid", at 37000 and 36000 feet. A holiday flight from Northern Ireland to the Mediterranean and a long-haul from Buenos Aires to Amsterdam:

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This one up at 41000ft wasn't joining in the fun:

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That X about 10 minutes later, starting to spread out:

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And looking the other way when I left for work:

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I saw this, overhead yesterday, Isle of Wight (approx 50.679753, -1.144313 facing ENE @ 1155 BST)

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It was fascinating to watch aircraft at differing altitudes produce differing results, either paths or normal contrails.
 
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I saw this, overhead yesterday, Isle of Wight (approx 50.679753, -1.144313 facing ENE @ 1155 BST)

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2015-06-25 11.55.54.jpg

It was fascinating to watch aircraft at differing altitudes produce differing results, either paths or normal contrails.

Nice. Are those two darker trails at right distrails or shadows? Hard to tell.
 
Nice. Are those two darker trails at right distrails or shadows? Hard to tell.

They look like distrails to me. More well defined irregular edges than shadows tend to be. Unusual to see two such good examples though, pity there's no bigger photo.
 
Spotted from our allotment. Pleased to report all fruit and veg still doing well ;)

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Do you think it would be correct to say the hole in the cirrus is from the plane. I kind of give up trying to work things out by myself because my view of perspective or perception can be a bit of a bitch and throws me off. I'm no flat earther but I think I have flat brain syndrome o_O
 
Do you think it would be correct to say the hole in the cirrus is from the plane. I kind of give up trying to work things out by myself because my view of perspective or perception can be a bit of a bitch and throws me off. I'm no flat earther but I think I have flat brain syndrome o_O

No but it did occur to me after posting that the trail makes it look like the plane flew through the hole
 
Distrail to contrail. I took this picture an hour ago over my home.
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I missed the exact moment of the plane's passage, but it almost certainly was UAE19 A380 that was descending to Manchester:
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As it was cutting through the cloud at about 28,000 ft, the contrail after the distrail may well have been aerodynamic one, but I have no proof to this :(
 
Been to Sheffield this weekend - very interesting trails you've got there in the UK ...

This was not long before sunset on Saturday evening, around 20:30h, roughly westward.
If I'm not mistaken, there are ripples/waves in the direction of two trails (which are probably also associated with Manchester). Never seen - or noticed - such a constellation before.

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Was travelling lightly, so just a shot from an old Nokia phone.
 
An unusual collection of near-parallel trails, stopping abruptly. I don't think they came from flights close together in time though.

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Panoramic for context:

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Planes in the southern approach to Heathrow were leaving distrails through this patch of altocumulus at about 11,000 feet this morning.

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The notch just below the sun was from another plane that just caught the edge of the cloud. I think this was the flight that left the long distrail:

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The contrail shown in these photos is from China Airlines flight 983 from Beijing to LAX, which flew over the San Francisco Bay area today around 4:45pm at 33,000 ft. (it's the thin trail coming from behind the hill on the lower left of the 1st photo). The photos were taken in Marin county at 4:55, 5:14 & 5:22, looking N/NE.
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The contrail moved east and eventually blended in with the cirrus cover to the east. There's also a lot of haze in the air from the two large fires to the northeast.

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How do chemtrail believers explain trails left by foreign airlines? Do they believe that the US government and the Chinese government are partners in a secret chemical spraying mission?

I saw a Tokyo to LAX flight within about 20 minutes after this flight, flying at about 37,000, but it left no trail (perhaps Japan isn't in on the mission...).

Another question I have... is it possible to tell when a cirrus cloud was formed naturally vs from a contrail? For example, the three groups of cirrus in the top photo that appear to be converging -- do those look natural? (just looking up today, as someone has pleaded to me to do so...)
 
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Another question I have... is it possible to tell when a cirrus cloud was formed naturally vs from a contrail? For example, the three groups of cirrus in the top photo that appear to be converging -- do those look natural? (just looking up today, as someone has pleaded to me to do so...)

I think they are natural. Natural cirrus often forms roughly parallel bands, which appear to converge towards the horizon due to perspective.
 
Contrail shadow over Hampshire this morning. It might not be obvious because of the perspective but the shadow is from the longer leg of the "X".

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And looking further to the right. The shadow almost looks like a distrail here.

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A couple of minutes later. The shadow is parallel with and just above the roof lines. It was more obvious to the naked eye than it appears here.

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I spent the last week holidaying in the island of Crete, Greece in the place under a fairly busy air traffic route connecting Western Europe with the Middle East. However, there were no long persistent contrails during the whole week. Observation of short contrails also were quite rare having ceased by the end of the week. By that time I acquired some experience in the spotting high altitude planes in the clear blue sky. Below are a few photos with the captions showing the flight, altitude, plane type, date, time and predicted relative humidity at 250 hPa as provided by the Earth server.

TOM59 FL400 Boeing 787-8 17-Aug-2015 11:55 UTC RH 59%
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UAE135 FL380 Boeing 777-31H(ER) 18-Aug-2015 10:43 UTC RH 12%
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UAE108 FL390 Airbus A330-243 19-Aug-2015 15:05 UTC RH 49%
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UAE75 FL400 Airbus A380-861 21-Aug-2015 14:48 UTC RH 14%
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UAE57 FL360 Boeing 777-31H(ER) 21-Aug-2015 14:48 UTC RH 14%
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MSA1669 FL330 Boeing 737-3Q8(SF) 22-Aug-2015 15:12 UTC RH 9%
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QTR15 FL380 Airbus A319-133(LR) 22-Aug-2015 15:12 UTC RH 9%
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SWR237 FL340 Airbus A320-214 23-Aug-2015 13:25 UTC RH 15%
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These data suggest that the formation of short trails does depend on the relative humidity, altitude/temperature and, probably, the aircraft type/engines. Note the two Emirates planes in photos 4 and 5, which passed over at the same time but at the different altitudes. In presumably a quite dry air, A380 flying at a higher altitude of 40,000 ft produced a very short trail, whilst B777 flying at lower 36,000 ft in a slightly warmer air produced no trail at all:
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Sorry for bending the rule slightly - but with permission of the owner this shot was not taken by me but by one Steve Rhymes, from the airport just 5miles from here. It's not often I see this (and I confess to hanging around the airport more than most) and felt it share-worthy.
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It's been a very wet day - we're being overpassed by a huge streak of rain-shedding cloud with heavy tunderstorms forecast for the next 12 hours or more.
 
image.jpg Neat curved contrail I saw just now. From the pendules it looks like it could be helical. 6:55am, 9/2, Downers Grove IL. The pano makes it look lower than it is. It was at perhaps 70deg elevation. I had to lean way back.
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Better perspective of elevation.
 
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Another illustration of how forced perspective exaggerates minor course corrections making them look like big zigzags. Taken yesterday morning:

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The track shows it was just a couple of very minor course corrections in the vicinity of Gatwick airport. The first turn was about 40 miles away, and the second one just over 30 miles away, from where I took the photo.

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I was up a lot earlier than I normally am on a Sunday and it was a good morning for contrails!

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I was driving along the M40 towards London yesterday (6/9/2015 - UK annotation) and there were lots of beautiful contrails crossing the sky

it was a clear blue sky, with very good visibility

all of them really clear - four distinct streams combining into one, a short distance behind the aircrafts

i was driving so could not take any photos (my wife seemed bemused when I suggested she should - so i did not want to push the idea to hard)
 
Caught this guy invisible contrailing. He denied it, but I think he's full of gas. :)image.jpg

Bit of a start-stop here, except it was more persistent-non-persistent. One of three West to East in a few minutes. This was 2:31 in Downers Grove IL. image.jpg
 
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