Condensation Trails

[gunug]

I remember when I was a kid and I managed to stay up "way" past my bedtime I would see this signoff on the television that had Air Force jets leaving big lines in the sky and it had a phrase about "slipping the surly bonds of earth."  I always liked that phrase and I like contrails sometimes still; especially at sunset.  There is an article in Air & Space magazine at this link that talks a little about these things:

http://www.airspacemag.com/issues/2007/jun...light_Lines.php

QUOTE

It’s not only jets that make contrails; piston aircraft do too. So do rockets. So, apparently, do birds. “I have heard of wild geese leaving vapor trails high over the Canadian Rockies,” Guy Murchie wrote in his book Song of the Sky. A goose exhaling warm, moist air into –38-degree air could produce a contrail, Minnis allows, although “it would certainly be a small one.”

With all respects to Guy Murchie (whose writing my dad dearly loved) I'd pay to see a goose leave a contrail!  

Later: I decided to look up the "surly bonds of earth" line and it comes from a poem called "High Flight" by a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot named John Gillespie Magee:

QUOTE

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless falls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor eer eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

A little bit much for more modern tastes but I like it!

[Gregg]

Of course you remember that President Reagan used that line in his remembrance of the space shuttle astronauts.

I thought it was a moving line (he used the first and last lines of the poem) and only found out much later that his speech writer had "borrowed" it.

[jcarter]

Hi Gunug,
Last year on the nasa site, there was also an article on this, and some amazing pictures and sat photos.  I cant seem to find it now, even in their archives.  But I did find this one,
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041013.html
I will see if my husband saved the other site.
Lots of amazing pictures on the web on this subject, Ive even got some spectacular sunsets with glowing contrails right off our little local beach.
Its odd that we can see the sunset off the beach on the East coast, but we are on the inner elbow of Cape Cod, thus we look west from this section of the coastline.
Fun topic, thanks.
Jane

[gunug]

Thanks for the link, Jane, I liked the space picture of all the contrails over Georgia!  Kind of looks like hen
scratching!  


http://www.flickr.com/photos/apelad/536542...b=1181350837500
This rather interesting cloud formation "might" be the result of the space shuttle and it was photographed less than 50 miles from the shuttle launch yesterday!


This is a skytyping technique used in the Los Angeles area! More info at:

http://www.skytypers.com/

[jcarter]

That was a spectacular launch!  

I remember years ago, there used to be a lot of advertisements by skywriting, But nowadays, the little planes tow banners over our local beaches in the summer. If they are smart, they head into the stiff WSW wind that usually is here in the afternoons, and thus they are about 25 mph over ground, so the banners get a lot of viewing. They do this over the larger beaches, usually advertising Rum, Beer, or suntan lotion.
Jane

[Xairbusdriver]

So, gunug, do they have another plane that can make 'blue'-outs to erase any misteakes?

[Gregg]

I think they have to put an X through the error and the correction "above"

[gunug]

QUOTE

I think they have to put an X through the error and the correction "above"

I think that would be so funny to see!  It would be my luck to have a "lot" of corrections if
I had that job!  

XABD - Maybe another plane with a vacuum system on it!