Contrail rings detected with the research aircraft Falcon

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Description:

At 10 km altitude above Germany.

Credit:

Christiane Voigt , Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt(DLR) - Germany

Other images/videos by this photographer (1 images)

When:

Submitted on October 20, 2010

Sections:

Atmospheric Sciences (269 images)

Comments:

The ring is a result of the so-called Crow Instability. In aerodynamics, the Crow Instability is a line-vortex instability, named after S. C. Crow. It is most commonly observed in the skies behind large aircraft, when the wingtip vortices interact with contrails from the engines, producing visible distortions in the shape of the contrail. The instability goes through several stages, at one fo which waves reconnect, forming the contrail rings as the one photographed here.

Posted by Konstantinos Kourtidis on January 6, 2011 10:23

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