I have a two mile walk that I do when up here staying with Vince and Jo Anne. So I was out yesterday and it was later in the day with blue sky and cirrus clouds. I had seen several contrails and photographed some. Contrails are "condensation trails" that are the exhaust from the turbine engines on aircraft. In the cold air at 36,000 feet, the moisture in the exhaust freezes and makes these long, thin clouds. So I loved this shot with the man made contrail and cirrus clouds. So I have this very cool app on my iPhone and you click on it to open it. It uses the GPS in the phone to see where I am and centers me on the screen and then it shows all the aircraft in the sky near me! So I looked this one up. It is Delta 2479 from Boston to Chicago! I mean how cool is that! When I am home and out riding my bike, there are all these aircraft inbound to JFK. I check some of them out, and always get kind of a far away feeling when I see a flight arriving from, for instance Paris, France or London. It is fun to know where aircraft are coming from and going to.
4 comments:
Cool photo, especially with the barren trees in the foreground. Of course you would have this App. It must be a lot of fun, especially when away from busy Long Island.
Joan
Thank you for the explanation of the contrails. The app sounds so cool! Betsey
I didn't know an app like that existed. Technology, though complicated to me, is amazing. Nice fall photo of the trees and the sky. Trace
Just a bit of history. Airplanes were required to have "transponders" which essentially made aircraft seen on radar from the ground, more visible. But if a controller happened to miss that two aircraft were heading toward each other, and didn't tell one of them to turn or descend to miss each other, both aircraft collided. It happened more times than you would want to know. So about 10 years ago the FAA came up with something called ADS-B. The simple version of how it worked was that each aircraft now broadcasts its position out into the air, and so all airplanes can see all other aircraft when flying. They don't need ground radar and controllers to warn them. It is an astounding thing to see. When I am flying now, I have an iPad on my lap and a little receiver suction-cupped to the window, and I can see all the aircraft around me and their speed and how high they are above or below me! It is very comforting to be able to see that. So some clever programmers made an app that receives the same information and displays it on your phone! Astounding!
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