Commenters on social media immediately began poking holes in that explanation, with some suggesting a government cover up of a UFO crash and / or secret weapons testing.
“The old swamp gas reflecting light from Venus story” one man wrote, “Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy could have come up with a better story than this,” another said.
A jet is flying directly into the sun. The contrail is self shadowing. To the ground observer the sun is below the horizon by perhaps 1° and the jet is perhaps 60 n.m. away or 1° of earth angle. The jet sees a rising or setting sun and the ground observer sees twilight. Hills obscure the ground observer's horizon. The horizon for the jet is approximately 3° below horizontal at normal cruising/contrail altitude. So if the sun were on the horizon the jet would have to be descending at 3° relative to the earth directly below it to have a self shadowing contrail. But the sun could also be above the jet's cloudless horizon by 3° (actually horizontal aka 90° to the center of earth), the jet could be approximately level, and the hills could be extending twilight for the observer. Since the earth is round the correction to a straight self-shadowing line would be about 1° over 8 minutes. The shape at the head looks like 4 engine contrails which get wrapped up in the wing vortex later on.
All of the figures above are based on earth's geometry and within the normal operating envelope of a transport jet. A self-shadowing contrail is likely.
[ + ] Spaceman84
[ - ] Spaceman84 1 point 3 yearsApr 9, 2022 12:54:44 ago (+1/-0)
[ + ] Teefinyomouf
[ - ] Teefinyomouf 1 point 3 yearsApr 9, 2022 10:16:02 ago (+2/-1)
All of the figures above are based on earth's geometry and within the normal operating envelope of a transport jet. A self-shadowing contrail is likely.
[ + ] SparklingWiggle
[ - ] SparklingWiggle 1 point 3 yearsApr 9, 2022 10:35:00 ago (+1/-0)
[ + ] RoxannaHardbutt
[ - ] RoxannaHardbutt [op] 0 points 3 yearsApr 9, 2022 12:08:23 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] 9000timesempty
[ - ] 9000timesempty 0 points 3 yearsApr 10, 2022 09:24:50 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] Nosferatjew
[ - ] Nosferatjew 0 points 3 yearsApr 9, 2022 11:35:17 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] SparklingWiggle
[ - ] SparklingWiggle 0 points 3 yearsApr 9, 2022 10:32:43 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] gaybeeye
[ - ] gaybeeye -2 points 3 yearsApr 9, 2022 10:41:40 ago (+0/-2)