Aviation Experts..Help? What is this map of?

Hey guys.... I found this map and used it as part of a chemtrails thread last night. A minor piece of supporting material to a larger point being made there. Since then, I've really spent time looking at it and the patterns it's showing.

Map of global contrails created by actual aircraft (This downloads a whopping 75+ meg of data to generate the motion tracking ....a warning for those who don't want that large a feed)

Obviously, by the link name I list there, I can see what it's meant to show and 95% of it looks just like what I'd expect to see. Aircraft in predictable clustering for numbers and density along traditional air travel routes around the world. It's fascinating for that in it's own right .....but look closer and outside the normal flight paths as I have been.

What the heck are some of those? Are they ghosts in the machine, so to speak? Anomalies which don't actually exist in the real world? You'll also notice the date/time group and how this isn't real time by any means..but that isn't necessary to get what I mean. There are some very odd and *VERY VERY FAST* "aircraft" depicted on that. Some I think are very likely meteors by my guess and the trajectory they take before disappearing from view. It looks from above as I'd imagine it would look from ground or sea level if watching a shooting star or other natural object coming into the atmosphere.

That still doesn't explain them all though. There are a few that are insanely fast by relative comparison to other jet tracks around the world and seem to be on their very own "established" routes?

So ATS experts in all things aviation, can I perhaps get some opinions (or more?) on just what this is showing and how reliable this type of a display is? Perhaps it's just guesswork and estimations with all the accuracy problems that would carry with it?

** More than one of the 'fast movers' appears to make almost 90 degree turns and one, reverse course back down it's own track over the North Pacific. This can't be based on solid radar or similar tracking data, can it?

Nevermind..lol..

I found it....

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

So ATS experts in all things aviation, can I perhaps get some opinions (or more?) on just what this is showing and how reliable this type of a display is? Perhaps it's just guesswork and estimations with all the accuracy problems that would carry with it?

I would U2U Uncinus and ask him for an explanation as it is from his site.

I looked at that animation earlier and it was surely an interesting map.

The site you mention, contrailscience, is run by one of our members, Uncinus.

In this thread he explains some of the issues he was having with the ATS-B dataset he got from somewhere, and how it results in some strange looking activity.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


The really fast stuff that I noticed was on the northern edge.

I think it is a function of the cartography. The further you go away from the Equator, the faster the flights appear to move, especially when they are on an East/West heading vs North/South.

reply to post by alfa1


Well, thank you very much Alfa. All the more so by how quickly you replied with that. I see his last post here was just last month and he logged in about a week ago. I'll certainly drop him a U2U. Indeed... I'll bet that's all it is then. Just tricks of the curvature of the Earth and how it shows these things. All sorts of odd ways that plays with data, I'll bet.

Never hurts to ask and one can't beat the quality of replies often coming back on a thing like this. It's appreciated!

Originally posted by butcherguy
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

The really fast stuff that I noticed was on the northern edge.

Must be Vladimir Putin's IFO's, as you can see they are slowing down from warp 12 to mach 0.8 before entering the traffic flow to an airport.

Probably a glitch that make planes that would overfly the north pole or high north speed up and reappear on the other side of the map.

Well just a theory, since the earth is round, and the map flat.

This illusion tricked me a while ago.

Per Phage from way back in 2011:

The "fast movers" are moving at the same speed as the other aircraft. The reason they look like they are moving faster is because the map is "stretched" at the poles because of the map projection used. Notice how wide Greenland is. It is not really wider than the US.

Hey dude,

It is really quite simple. Remember that the earth is a globe. A 3D sphere. But this map is projected on 2D. The anomolies you are seeing are aircraft passing over the pole. In reality they are only crossing a couple hundred miles. But on the map it looks like they are hypersonic.

You can provit it for yourself. Get the ruler tool on Google earth and measure the distance from Hudson bay to Northern Russia. its not as far as you think. And you DONT have to cross the Atlantic!

Cool site though!



BTW in my spare non ATS time, I work in aviation and I know all about the things we can;t talk about. oops ive said too much!!

Hey, thanks everyone for the replies. For the record, the explanations make sense and obviously there really wasn't much of a story here at all. Then again, that is why I opened it with a pure question and not any presumption of knowledge or assumption to understanding what I was looking at.

The contributions offered to make sense of what, at first, looked a bit odd certainly helped clear up the matter.

Thanks again and I suppose that, aside from a pretty neat map of world air traffic for given times, it's just as it should be and nothing out of the ordinary.

Better to ask and learn than remain ignorant and assume, right?

Originally posted by fockewulf190
This illusion tricked me a while ago.

Per Phage from way back in 2011:

The "fast movers" are moving at the same speed as the other aircraft. The reason they look like they are moving faster is because the map is "stretched" at the poles because of the map projection used. Notice how wide Greenland is. It is not really wider than the US.

edit on 14-4-2013 by fockewulf190 because: (no reason given)

Don't you just wish you had Phage's data bases and experts to ring up to explain everything as conventional?

Originally posted by Aliensun

Originally posted by fockewulf190
This illusion tricked me a while ago.

Per Phage from way back in 2011:

The "fast movers" are moving at the same speed as the other aircraft. The reason they look like they are moving faster is because the map is "stretched" at the poles because of the map projection used. Notice how wide Greenland is. It is not really wider than the US.

edit on 14-4-2013 by fockewulf190 because: (no reason given)

Don't you just wish you had Phage's data bases and experts to ring up to explain everything as conventional?

As a matter of fact, I do! It seems as though Phage's data bases and experts were in this really awesome thing called 'brain' which is configured by this even more awesome thing called 'knowledge', in particular there was this sinister looking Smoking Man in a skinny black tie who passed a note which said "google Mercator projection".