Contrail over the NTTR captured on Google Earth

Note I rotated the image a bit to fit the monitor, so north is not straight up. This is new as far as I can tell since I would have certainly noticed this before.

If the contrail is captured, you would think the plane would also be in the image. I have zoomed in but can't find it.

reply to post by gariac


Took me awhile to see it, but then I saw the shadow it cast. Its expanded into a pretty large cloud so I would think the plane is long gone from that shot. Try seeing if you can follow it further, who knows.

My guess would be that the contrail was there for the pic a while after the plane passed through.

It has spread out quite a bit, and been twisted by the winds.

reply to post by gariac


OHHHHHHH Now I see it lol

shaddup wino, you numpty

That looks like it's several minutes at least after the aircraft has left the area. It's had enough time to spread out, and is mostly dissipated. The chances of seeing the plane in this instance are pretty slim.

Just another worm hole in our atmosphere,
showing departure and arrival points of primitive air travel,
in our modern world.

reply to post by Zaphod58


The thing to note is the trail necks down (gets slimmer), so you know the direction of travel. That is, the satellite takes a snap shot, and fat trail means past travel.

The trail is 10 miles long. Figure 200mph for the plane. That's 3.33 miles per minute. So we are seeing 3 minutes of travel. Now the fat part of the trail is about 3/4 of a mile wide. That puts the wind dispersing the contrail at 15mph. All of which is interesting but doesn't exactly lead to anything conclusive.

If you want to view this on Google Earth, the trail starts at
36.639266 -116.355402
and ends at
36.743084 -116.485850

There is an additional dark streak at
36.706235 -116.235871
but I can't say conclusively that it is another contrail.