Spiral Contrails viewed from the International Space Station

[Mick West]

Source: https://twitter.com/astro_kimbrough/status/840584517798789120




So where and what are these contrails? Circular contrails are generally not "airliners", but more likely are military planes, like AWACs.

 

[Trailspotter]

This is the location:
Source: https://twitter.com/phi48/status/840707082919784448

Snow caps of Pyrenees match perfectly:

 

[Henk001]

ISS was right above the south of France at 7:30 GMT

 

[skephu]

it was on February 23rd.

 

[skephu]

I checked the planefinder.net playback for that day but didn't find any plane making circles in that area.

 

[Trailspotter]

it was on February 23rd.

The ISS photo was taken at about 10:10 UTC, half an hour before the Terra satellite image of the area.

I checked the planefinder.net playback for that day but didn't find any plane making circles in that area.

There was an A380 air test from Toulouse just before ISS passed over:


It was outside the spiral contrail area, but there could be other air tests, which are not on Planefinder.net. Otherwise, there was a lot of regular air traffic over the area, suggesting this was not a military practice.

 

[skephu]

Another plane doing similar things:

 

[Trailspotter]

Comparison of the Google Earth added photo (from the ISS location on 2017-02-23 10:10:20 UTC) with the added Terra satellite image (taken at about 10:40 UTC):

 

[skephu]

This plane is doing interesting things:

 

[Mick West]

It was outside the spiral contrail area, but there could be other air tests, which are not on Planefinder.net. Otherwise, there was a lot of regular air traffic over the area, suggesting this was not a military practice.

It's in a relatively empty patch of air.

 

[Mick West]

This plane is doing interesting things:

Possibly this brand new A320 for Air India being tested.
https://a320archive.com/msn/7475

 

[skephu]

Looks like there are many Airbus test flights near Toulouse, which is the location of Airbus' headquarters and final assembly line for airliners.

 

[Trailspotter]

Whatever it was, it circled there for hours. There are fresh contrails in the orbit's location in the Terra (12:20 UTC) and Suomi NPP (12:45 UTC) images.

I am not sure about the orbit being a perfect circle, however.