Strange Spiral Cloud near Moscow

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Very interesting find, I am looking forward to seeing what caused this! Contrails, or missile launch is the first things that came to mind.
S & F

There is a large liquid propellant rocket motor development facility in Khimki where this was photographed.

NPO Energomash (wikipedia entry)

NPO Energomash “V. P. Glushko” is a Russian manufacturer originated from design bureau, which focuses primarily on the development and production of liquid propellant rocket engines. NPO Energomash is based in Khimki, Moscow state, with satellite facilities in Samara, Perm, and St. Petersburg, and employs close to 5500 workers.[1] Originally founded in 1946 as OKB-456, the company is noted for its long history of large scale LOX/Kerosene engine development, notably the RD-107, RD-170, and RD-180 engines. These engines have functioned as prime movers for such vehicles as R-7, Proton, Soyuz, Energia and Atlas V. NPO Energomash acquired its current name on May 15, 1991, in honor of its chief designer.

NPO Energomash official Web site
(npoenergomash.ru)

Here is a couple images of that facility;





This was the same place a Russian blogger snuck into and grabbed all sorts of clandestine photos of it;

Back to the spiral - I'm of the opinion it was not caused by anything in flight, but rather an engine test (ground-based and pointing skyward) or something vented upward, the skewed angle of the spiral may simply be caused by wind.

That doesn't look anything like the norway spiral or any of the other spirals mentioned in this thread. For one, it looks like a 'twist' not a 'spiral', and I don't see how it could look anything like a spiral for that matter. It is also closer to Earth than the Norway Spiral, so it looks more like something caused by a plane or something on ground. As a matter of fact, the angle of these two photos:



and



Shows that it isn't a straight upward twist, but angled around 45 degrees, meaning whatever did it was either ascending or descending, most likely ascending, as the trail 'fans out' at the top.

So after taking a look at this:

Q: Why are there more short-lived contrails than persistent contrails? A: For a particular geographical location, it may seem that there are more of one type of contrail than another. Actually, the type and number seems to depend on the amount of moisture and temperature in the atmosphere where the plane is flying. If the area is fairly dry, then more short-lived contrails might be observed. If there is more moisture, such as along the east coast of the United States, there might be more persistent contrails observed. To look at observations from other areas, you might like to visit the GLOBE website and click on the Data Access button.

And taking a look at Moscow's moisture / humidity for the last 2 days:

Yesterday: Humidity97%
Today: Humidity75%

And Moscow's average humidity levels for this month:

71 %

local.msn.com...

I can assume that the area of air above Moscow is very humid and moist, attributing to the size of the trail itself and the duration that it stays for. I'm not saying that this is without a doubt a plane, I'm just saying it is most likely a plane, which could have been said just by taking a 2 second look at the photo. Again, this looks nothing like the Norway Spiral, or any spiral I've ever seen, the neither top or bottom of the trail spreads out and the top fans out, so I presume that the plane just did a flip through the air while ascending.

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
Back to the spiral - I'm of the opinion it was not caused by anything in flight, but rather an engine test (ground-based and pointing skyward) or something vented upward, the skewed angle of the spiral may simply be caused by wind.

Now that I think about it, I forgot to account for wind. Meh, I haven't had enough coffee today.

reply to post by mr10k


A 3D spiral will look like a "twist" depending on your perspective of it. Such as in the case of the Norway spiral. Obviously, the spiral we see in the pictures from Norway has depth to it, not just length and width (especially if it is supposed to be from a rocket). If we somehow saw the spiral from the side, It would look much like the "twist" we see in these pictures. Conversely, if the "twist" in the OPs pictures were scene from the bottom (or looking straight up at it if one were directly below it), it would look like a spiral.

Example:


Some more ways one could look at a spiral:
Spirals

An anecdotal example: I bought some decorations for my boyfriends 30th birthday. In the package, they look like 2D spirals, but when you take them out to hang on the ceiling, they are actually 3D spirals (you pull up from the center and let the rest hang down) and look like the OPs "twist".

reply to post by Heliophant


I had to edit the text in that newspaper clip, it was terribly worded. lol Bloody good work there, mate! I wonder about the similarities between what they were seeing and what we're talking about here. It's unfortunately vague. If only there was an eyewitness or another more detailed report... *off for some googling...

Also the following posters post is quite interesting:
reply to post by Blarneystoner

By the way, Blarneystoner, where'd you get that info from? It would be interesting reading.

-----
Well, I did a little bit of 'research', I've mostly come up with more of the same,
the 1914 spiral is mentioned here
Somehow I got from there to finding stuff about Tesla and scalar waves. Some interesting things:
Scalar waves:Theory and experiments (2001)
(still perusing that)
aaand this

the lighting and shading of the cloud does not appear to be legit to me. would like to see some definitive proof that these photos were not altered .

Originally posted by nunya13
reply to post by mr10k

 

A 3D spiral will look like a "twist" depending on your perspective of it. Such as in the case of the Norway spiral. Obviously, the spiral we see in the pictures from Norway has depth to it, not just length and width (especially if it is supposed to be from a rocket). If we somehow saw the spiral from the side, It would look much like the "twist" we see in these pictures. Conversely, if the "twist" in the OPs pictures were scene from the bottom (or looking straight up at it if one were directly below it), it would look like a spiral.

Example:


Some more ways one could look at a spiral:
Spirals

An anecdotal example: I bought some decorations for my boyfriends 30th birthday. In the package, they look like 2D spirals, but when you take them out to hang on the ceiling, they are actually 3D spirals (you pull up from the center and let the rest hang down) and look like the OPs "twist".

edit on 26-12-2012 by nunya13 because: fix image link

?

You don't seem to understand the difference between a twist and a spiral

wiki.answers.com...

When I say twist I'm specifically referring to the helixical shape that is NOT a spiral. There is no way not to tell the difference between a spiral and a twist -- a spiral gets bigger as it gets farther from it's origin point, a helix/twist does not.

Originally posted by alfa1

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
The Norway 'spiral cloud' was alleged to be a malfunctioning Russian submarine-launched rocket. This latest one is in Moscow. Another faulty rocket...?

My first thoughts are that these two look absolutely nothing like each other in any way at all.

The new one looks more like some acrobatic planes were doing some work and left some contrails behind them.

Exactly what I was thinking. Resembles a double helix. I vote stunt plane.

I'd say at least a pair of airplanes doing an aerobatic manuever. I've seen a similar helix made right in front of me, but going sideways as Canada's Snowbirds put on an impressive show in my town earlier this year. (Thanks for touring here in the States guys!) So it wouldn't surprise me that a pair of aircraft doing some coordinated manuver could produce this.

The thing is, if the weather is right the contrails last quite a while after the planes making them move on.

So, does Russia put on any airshows in the winter? (Practice for some Newyear's event or some such?)

Originally posted by alfa1

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
The Norway 'spiral cloud' was alleged to be a malfunctioning Russian submarine-launched rocket. This latest one is in Moscow. Another faulty rocket...?

My first thoughts are that these two look absolutely nothing like each other in any way at all.

The new one looks more like some acrobatic planes were doing some work and left some contrails behind them.

The one in norway was a portal not a cloud the one in moscow could be caused by wind rotation and sheer!

I've seen many members saying it was made by planes, I didn't see any evidence that supports this theory, not even a YouTube video or a photo of a silmilar event.

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Looks like a double helix. A truly strange formation to say the least.

Edit* I suppose I should have read through all the comments before putting my two cents in. At least I know I'm not alone in seeing the resemblance

Being a pilot myself I can say imo it's certainly NOT stunt planes, an easy way to debunk this is the fact that the two 'spirals' connect to each other through the center, if it were two aircraft there would be 2 lines.
Again I mention it looks like the exhaust (though vertical) of the Aurora ram jet.
Someone mentioned the humidity being high in Moscow but unless you are close to the ground the relative humidity at altitude is totally different.
Am I the only one that thinks it looks like a DNA strand?

I would say that this is just a rare ocurrence of a twisted contrail, albeit a more pronounced and distinct example. The contrail is not vertical as can be seen by the other images. Perspective will come into play.

As to why contrails twist? The following from 2008 has rolling turbulence as a possible cause?

marcvaldez.blogspot.co.uk...

www.flickr.com...

If the date and time of the images can be determined then possibly someone can match up wind profiler data records over Moscow?

That's a very interesting contrail.

One of the common mistakes people make when looking at contrails is to assume that the way it ends up is the way that it started. Contrails do NOT mark the track of a plane, unless the air is perfectly still and calm, which it never is. Contrails are blown sideways by the wind so they are at an angle to the actual track of the plane. They also sink so they are below the track of the plane. They spread out to cover an area much wider than the track or the plane.

And sometimes they rotate. They rotate, not because the plane is rotating, or flying in a spiral path, but because the AIR is rotating. Air is a fluid, an it acts like a giant ocean. Sometimes you get waves in this ocean, which contain huge rotating regions.



If a plane flies through such a region of rotation, then the contrail, which starts out straight, will end up twisted, if it stays in it long enough, then it might twist more that once. Normally these twists are fairly long.



I don't know if such a rotating region of air formed the Moscow twist. It does look like there are two contrails. However it could just be that the bottom edge of a sinking contrail was thick enough to look like a separate contrail. It could be that two jets were flying together (not in a spiral), and then the rotating air wrapped their contrails together.

Have a look at these clouds. You can see the huge rotating regions of air because they are above a fog layer, and the fog layer gets sucked up into these wave shapes:


But then imagine this scene is much higher up, and there are no clouds there. But the "waves" are still there, the air is still rotating, you just can't see it. Then a plane (or maybe two) flies right through the middle of one of those regions, hits a spot of higher humidity, and leaves a short contrail, which gets twisted, maybe ending up like the Moscow twist.

reply to post by Uncinus


Great information, but the images in the OP still don't look like a contrail - they are too brief and appear too close to the ground. I have seen contrail appear and disappear in bands due to the changing atmospherics conditions the plane flew through, but this was over a large swath of sky.

The images in the OP also appear to be much more vertical than a typical flight path - either this was a stunt plane, or it's not a contrail. None of the conditions shown or comments made in Russian from the original source seems to indicate there was any unusual flying in the area - no air shows, stunt planes, etc.

The location of the helix is Khimki, and based on the Russian aerospace industry presence there, I would suspect it's a heavily guarded air space. That doesn't rule out a stunt plane completely but it does make it very unlikely.

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
reply to post by Uncinus

 

Great information, but the images in the OP still don't look like a contrail - they are too brief and appear too close to the ground. I have seen contrail appear and disappear in bands due to the changing atmospherics conditions the plane flew through, but this was over a large swath of sky.

I think it's more close to the horizon than close to the ground. It's difficult to say how high it is without a frame of reference.

I've seen contrails persist is short individual segments like that before. Not in a spiral though.

The images in the OP also appear to be much more vertical than a typical flight path - either this was a stunt plane, or it's not a contrail. None of the conditions shown or comments made in Russian from the original source seems to indicate there was any unusual flying in the area - no air shows, stunt planes, etc.

A plane flying towards you will leave a contrail that seems to be vertical - especially if it's short. Note that from other angles it looks like 45 degrees. It's quite possible it's actually horizontal, and many miles away, and only looks like it's angled because of the perspective.

reply to post by Staroth


many want it to be...


my money is on a plane.

I have observed this phenomenon myself in the past, and I have one explanation (not 100% sure it is correct, but it is the most likely one so far). To cut the story short, these are merely long-surviving contrails under low wind.

First of all, my own pictures, this is from a few years back (Kyiv, Ukraine):
i.imgur.com...
i.imgur.com...




Each of these was left by a different plane. I've got pictures of a few more - the entire sky was full of these spirals, we have a major navigation point nearby.

These were absolutely normal jet planes flying up high. I've got a close look at half of jets leaving those trails. You can see that on last picture, the spiral is quite big and intense/tight.

The likely explanation for these spiral contrails is:
1) Aircraft leaves a normal contrail and two contra-rotating vortices created by its wingtips/body
2) Weather allows contrail to exist for a long time (20-40 minutes)
3) Low side wind is creating a selective situation: one vortex starts to increase in amplitude as it's slowly gaining energy from wind, other vortex looses energy until it disappears.

See wallpapers-diq.org... for a cool picture of wingtip-generated vortices.

I've been looking at them for entire morning (until weather conditions became unfavorable), this is how a spiral contrail evolves:
1) 3 minutes after aircraft: aircraft flies over and leaves a normal long white puffy contrail
2) 5 minutes after aircraft: contrail starts to disappear slowly, only remains in some places (which will later become spirals), usually one or two places over entire sky.
3) 10 minutes after aircraft, and you can already see spiral forming, looks very impressive
4) After about 20 to 40 minutes after aircraft has passed over the contrail dissapears. At this point it's already a big, nice spiral. My photo camera wasn't good enough to show it.