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Picture of the month March 2009 

 

 

Picture taken at Kampenhout on February 14, 2009

 

Belgium is quite a busy crossroad for enroute upper air traffic heading west/east or north/south. Quite often observers from the ground may witness so called close encounters between 2 aircraft, but in fact this is nothing more than an optic illusion. The minimum safe vertical distance is 1000 ft (300 m) and the minimum horizontal separation is 3 NM (= 18228 ft  or 5556 m). Especially the vertical distance is hardly to guess from the ground, only a clue can be obtained when a contrail crosses another one.     

One of these events was captured trough the telescope with focal length of 2400 mm and indeed this may be called a lucky shot. The Korean Air Jumbo was heading south for Paris measured at an altitude of 38000 ft, while the Oman Air Airbus was heading west for Heathrow measured at an altitude of 36000 ft and indeed the contrail of the Airbus is visually lower than the other one.  



List of pictures of the month