Hurry Up and Wait

That's what air travel seems to be these days. Get to the airport early to get through security. And them sit around until boarding. I know, the definition of a first world problem. Annoying nonetheless.

Even more so when one is on the plane but going nowhere. The situation we found ourselves in on the first flight leg of our journey to Uganda.

Because of this. Storms in the area. (The link is to a video of lightning. Alas I was seated over the wing, which blocked the best parts of the lightning. Look for reflections of us in the airplane window.)

As it was an international flight we got there two plus hours early. The plane boarded on time. Left the gate just a bit late.* And then sat on the tarmac for two hours. I was genuinely worried we would miss our connecting flight. Which would really mess things up in Uganda.

We flew over night, landing the morning of the next day. And what would have been a comfortable layover of several hours became a mad dash to get to the connecting flight.

At least the signs in the Brussels airport were honest. And we did make the flight.

We flew across the Atlantic on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which has electronic window shades. Which make for some interesting tones. This is the first signs of sunrise.

And which can be controlled by the flight staff. Which is very annoying when looking out a window that suddenly goes dark.

Fortunately there were user controls as well.

For us, this would turn out to be the most stressful part of the trip, a trip which would be over all too soon.

⛈  ✈️  ⚡️  ✈️  ⛈

* Whether or not a plane leaves on time is measured not when it actually takes off, but when it leaves the gate. So while we left the airport more than two hours later then scheduled, the plane was listed as departing only twenty minutes late.

A Big Bright Spot

On our trip to Utah this past March, I did what I usually do, looked out the airplane window.

And I saw this, a big bright spot.

A big bright spot that traveled along with us, moving across the landscape below. You can see for yourself in this linked video. (Warning, this is just a boring video of a barely visible bright spot moving across the farm fields in the center of the image. Enjoy!)

This is an example of the Opposition Effect. This occurs when looking at the anti-solar point, as the shadows cast by objects in that direction are completely behind those very same objects. And are thus blocked from the viewer. This lack of shadows makes the area appear brighter than its surroundings.

Click here for an explanation of the phenomena (as always for anything optics related, it is from Les Cowley's excellent Atmospheric Optics site).

Here is another video, this one showing a dark spot surrounded by a subtle glow moving across the ground. In this case the plane is lower in altitude so we can see its shadow.

☁️  ☁️  ☁️  ☁️  ☁️

Of course, to observe such phenomena the sky needs to be clear. Earlier in the flight it was cloudy, as shown in the image below. And the Opposition Effect was not visible.

No doubt hidden behind that Glory.

X ...

... marks the spot.

Flying home from my trip out west to Redrock Country, I spotted this out the (dirty) airplane window.

A big "X" right there on the clouds.

Alas, being on a moving airplane did not afford me the ability to investigate just what exactly the "X" was marking. It must be something important for such a big "X"! But I was able to acquire the coordinates on my GPS, should I, or you, wish to explore further.

Good luck should you go searching!

🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯

And then just a little bit later there was a big target on the cloud tops.

Alas, such targets move along with the plane, so no coordinates this time. You'll need to parachute directly in to explore this one.

☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️

The big X, as I'm sure you've realized, is the shadows of two contrails; planes headed in perpendicular directions. And the target is glory. But it is fun to imagine the cloud tops as a fantastic landscape just waiting to be explored. And I've been doing so since my first plane rides many years ago. If you do go exploring, be sure to dress warmly, as it is cold out there in the clouds!

Hurricane's Edge

On our way back home from our Eclipse (and more!) trip to Oregon we passed through Dallas this past Sunday.

I had a window seat looking south as we took off.

This is what I saw.

The edge of the hurricane Harvey. The storm ravishing the the Texas coast.

Yet in Dallas, 225 miles from Houston, it was sunny, albeit with signs that of rain earlier in the day. We had been concerned that our flight would be delayed or canceled. But there were no issues.

⛈☔️⛈☔️⛈🌪⛈☔️⛈☔️⛈

There are plenty of issues further south. Click here to make a donation to the American Red Cross to help the victims of this storm.

Window Colors

I travel quite a bit and generally have a camera with me.* And I always try to get a window seat. And I notice things. So I see things like the optical phenomena shown here.

The first is the view through an airplane window looking at the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the eastern United States, as we flew home form our recent trip to Mexico. The colors are an optical effect caused by polarized light and the makeup of the window. I've seen this effect before, but usually it is much subtler and difficult to photograph.

The effect is quite pronounced here, but I was so focused on the clouds and water that I didn't notice it at first. But once I did I made sure to get a good image.

This second shot is of the window on the ferry we took from Cancun to Isla Mujeres. And I had no problem noticing this time. I waited until we docked and most of the passengers had left their seats before snapping off a couple of shots.

More info can of course be found here.

📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷

* I almost always have my iPhone 6S Plus with me, and I used it to take the rainbow image in this  prior post (a panorama). The images here were taken with my Sony RX100 II camera, which I bought specifically because it can fit in my pocket. The iPhone is longer and wider than the Sony, but the Sony is considerably thicker. The Sony is also a very good camera.

Flying Home

This is the shadow of the airplane, surrounded by a glory, which carried Patty and I on the final leg of our journey home.

From Ecuador, where we had a wonderful time exploring from the Amazon rain forest to 14,000 feet in the Andes. We saw nine species of monkeys, a poison dart frog, snakes, tarantulas, and had 480 species of birds, including 41 species of hummingbirds.

More to come ..

Recovered

After several days up in the tree, the drone has been recovered.

It took a step ladder, a 40 foot telescoping flag pole, and shop vac extension tubes to do so. But the drone returned to earth seemingly no worse for its ordeal.

While in flight (and entangled) I did manage to trigger a few photos before the battery died.

Here is the view from the tree.

And a view from a happier part of the flight.

Over the parking area, looking at the garage, with solar cell array, and the back garden. Note that it has been one week since the blizzard and the back of the garden is snow free.

I know, not the best images. You'd think a $60 drone would have a better camera, right? (I'm already looking at upgrades ...)

I've recharged the battery and tested the craft and it appears to be in fine working order. It helped that on the way down it landed first in another set of branches. And since it was in a willow tree the branches cushioned the fall. I was then able to knock it free a second time and it landed right side up on the (snow free!) ground.

The next flight will be from a tree free local park.

Birefringence

In my latest OPOD there was an accompanying image illustrating birefringence.

On our trip home from Florida, while flying over the Everglades, I was, as is my custom, taking pictures out the window. This time of the cloud formations and their reflections in the water below.

And I captured this image:

Which appears to show the same phenomena. Cool.

And here is a shot of the cloud reflections in the waters of the Everglades. Note the airplane flying below us.

It was a fun but all too short trip.

Shadows and Light

On the flight back from the Florida trip that provided the image for the last post, I noticed this out the airplane window:

Not one but two contrail shadows.  At different angles and converging on the anti-solar point. Curious, why would my plane have two contrail shadows?

Here is a shot that shows the two shadows against a thin layer of clouds, making them more obvious.

But wait there's more!

Hmmm ...

A clue:

Ignore the cloud bow and glory for a moment and look at the top of the image. Seems we were not the only plane in the sky that day.

Here's another clue:

Look closely on the left center of the image (click to bigafy). You can see the cloud shadows, which are also angled toward the anti-solar point.

So mystery solved. Contrails from the many planes that ply the eastern corridor along with shadows form the clouds, because of perspective all seeming to converge on the point, the anti-solar point.

Ok, now you can look at the glory.

Flying Thru the Crown

Remember this post Flying Thru the Crown?

(You are reading it now ...)

It is an OPOD!

(If you are counting at home that's six OPODs.)

OPOD

Remember this post: From The Air ?

Yep another OPOD!

I'm up to 1:15 minutes of fame!

Woo Hoo!

All my OPODs can be found here.

From the Air

Another in the series ... this time on our way to Yellowstone on Christmas eve.

The Pointy-Shadow effect, where the shadow of the clouds seems to converge on a point in the distance, even though the cloud is not pointy. Look for this effect the next time you are on a mountain peak at sunrise or sunset.

Common birds are known among birders as "trash birds". Glories like the one above are becoming "trash atmospherics" for me. Not! I still think it very cool each time I see one.

This however is something I've rarely seen, a cloud bow.  I've seen hints of them before but never one so well defined.

The basic physics of cloud bows (aka "fog bows") is the same as with rainbows, light passing through water droplets. But the cloud droplets are much smaller than raindrops. And thus diffraction effects take over. The physics of glories on the other hand is not entirely worked out.

Here is the glory with the shadow of the plane's contrail looking like an arrow that hit the bullseye of a target. As the glory is centered on the the plane's shadow, the contrail shadow can't help but hit the target.

Put them all together and you have the contrail shadow "arrow" going from the bow to the glory "target". I wonder how many of my fellow passengers noticed even one of these phenomena?

Glory

New Year's Eve found us on a plane heading home from Yellowstone. And as we took off I noticed a thin veil of clouds between us and the ground. I readied the camera and was rewarded with glories.

I liked that the clouds were so thin the ground was visible through them.

But as continued on the clouds thickened.

Eventually the surface faded form view and there were just the clouds, the shadow, and the colored rings.

As we climbed on up to cruising altitude the shadow of the plane grew smaller and smaller. And then it was gone.

If you bigafy the image and look closely you can see the "rings" extend to the edge of the frame (I increased the saturation in Photoshop to bring this out in the image above.)

The show lasted for close to an hour. But eventually the sky cleared and the target was gone. It was the best apparition of a glory I've had the pleasure to observe.  Next time you go flying grab a window seat on the side opposite the sun. And maybe you'll be treated to a glory. Be sure to have your camera ready.

From the Air

I'm fortunate in that I get to travel on a fairly regular basis for both work and pleasure. And as is my custom I look for a window seat, preferably away form the wings. And so it was on our trip back from Costa Rica. And I managed to snap a few pictures ...

Including these:

My first ever good shots of a glory. I had seen glories a couple times before, but I either had no camera handy or only my cellphone. This time I was prepared and rewarded.

At the same time there was a rainbow a bit further back over the engine (I wasn't quite far enough away from the wing for my liking, but at least I wasn't completely blocked).

I also saw some wildfires, like this one in Florida.

Curiously for an astronomy enthusiast, I'm a fan of clouds. I've always imagined them as fantastical landscapes that I'd love to explore.

I'm even a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society.

And that's where I turned to for an explanation of what's going on in this photo.

The effect is subtle and difficult to photograph. And something I don't believe I had ever seen (or noticed) before. If you look under the clouds you can see a foggy patch.


Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the afore mentioned Cloud Appreciation Society, was kind enough to look at my image to try and figure out what I was seeing. He wrote, " I don't think this is a cloud effect.  It looks to me as if the white blurs below the clouds are reflections of the white parts of the cloud on the water's surface.  If the sun was behind you it would make sense that it could bounce off the clouds down to the sea and back to your vision."

And that's the best answer so far as to what this is. If you've any insight into what's going on please let me know in the comments.

Below

Subsun

Flying back from California to New Jersey I had the window seat. And somewhere around Texas I saw a disk of light floating in the sky, keeping pace with our plane. A UFO perhaps? Maybe a top secret device out of Area 51? A Foo Fighter?

Nope. Just the sun. And ice crystals.

It is not obvious but there are thin clouds between the plane and the ground. Clouds composed of ice crystals, small hexagonal plates. And these plates act like tiny mirrors. When the conditions are right the mirrors line up and just like on the jet engine, reflect the sun.

This image of the sun is known as a subsun. Subsuns are essentially very compact solar pillars. Most are smeared, elongate, due to the fluttering of the crystals as they fall. But here the reflection is very round meaning the crystals very falling smoothly.

I've flown quite a bit and this is the first subsun I've seen. I doubt anyone else on the plane noticed it, mainly because they weren't looking. Which is a pity, because as a wise man once said, you can observe a lot by just looking.

(The wise man was Yogi Berra.)