Jurgen de Boer (site) imaged this aircraft and contrail near to sunset on 2nd May. The aircraft was 10-20° from the sun. The structured iridescence is interesting. Seven or more colour bands are visible. The water droplets or ice crystals of the condensation trail will have had similar formation histories. Perhaps this produced rather uniform sizes and mean size variation along the trail thus accounting for the uniform colour bands?
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Condensation Trail Iridescence
Jurgen de Boer (site) imaged this aircraft and contrail near to sunset on 2nd May. The aircraft was 10-20° from the sun. The structured iridescence is interesting. Seven or more colour bands are visible. The water droplets or ice crystals of the condensation trail will have had similar formation histories. Perhaps this produced rather uniform sizes and mean size variation along the trail thus accounting for the uniform colour bands?
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3 comments:
A very nice Pic. Are you sure, that's produced by WATER droplets or crystals?
Greetings
Claudia
Hard to say which - supercooled water is possibly more likely than ice after such a short time?
On the other hand is in a contrail a lot of material, which suitable as condensation nuclei for creation of ice crystals. According to earth observations form under these conditions ice crystals many faster...
Good Night
Claudia
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