A series of stunning rainbow contrails were captured by amateur photographer Soumyadeep Mukherjee, from Kolkata, India.
Contrails are a sort of ice cloud produced when water vapor generated from the airplane’s engines condenses and freezes around dust particles or with the water vapor already present within the air, based on NASA.
Rainbow contrails are produced when the frozen water droplets diffract sunlight in the identical direction. In keeping with Contrail Science, they’re generally known as aerodynamic contrails and are formed when air pressure and temperature over the wings drop, causing the water vapor to freeze into different-sized droplets. When backlit by the sun, these frozen water droplets refract the sunshine at different wavelengths, appearing as a rainbow to the observer.
It’s all about being in the best place at the best time.
Mukherjee had originally got down to photograph the International Space Station transiting the sun, but clouds soon put a stop to that. He then turned his sights to an emerging sundog — a concentrated patch of sunlight occasionally seen to the best, left, or each side of the sun — with a low-magnification zoom when he saw an airplane in the sphere of view.
“Nature never disappoints,” Mukherjee told Space.com in an email.
Equipment used:
Post-processing: Photoshop
Equipment: Nikon D5600, Sigma 150-600c, Leofoto tripod
Location: Kolkata, India
Exif: f/9, 1/1600s, ISO 250, 600mm
“I quickly zoomed my lens at 600mm and was very surprised to see some colors on the contrail.” Mukherjee said.
“I could not consider that I captured it”, Mukherjee continued. “The colors were faint and never visible to the naked eye. Had I not zoomed in with my camera, I’d have missed it completely.”
[insert image of the 7 contrails]
Caption: A collage of seven individual images captured over a period of 40 seconds showing some changes within the iridescent colours and in addition within the contrail shape.
Thrilled along with his efforts from July 19, Mukherjee set his sights on the sky once more on July 24, and photographed more rainbow contrails in exquisite detail.
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