SkyStef's weather & aviation page
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SkyStef's weather & aviation page |
Picture of the month March 2009
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| Picture taken at Kampenhout on February 14, 2009 |
| Belgium is quite a busy crossroad for
enroute upper air traffic heading west/east or north/south. Quite often
observers from the ground may witness so called close encounters between 2
aircraft, but in fact this is nothing more than an optic illusion. The
minimum safe vertical distance is 1000 ft (300 m) and the minimum horizontal
separation is 3 NM (= 18228 ft or 5556 m). Especially the vertical distance is hardly to
guess from the ground, only a clue can be obtained when a contrail crosses another
one.
One of these events was captured trough the telescope with focal length of 2400 mm and indeed this may be called a lucky shot. The Korean Air Jumbo was heading south for Paris measured at an altitude of 38000 ft, while the Oman Air Airbus was heading west for Heathrow measured at an altitude of 36000 ft and indeed the contrail of the Airbus is visually lower than the other one. |
