Posted on 06/30/2009 12:34:46 PM PDT by Artemis Webb
The breaking of the sound barrier is not just an audible phenomenon. As a new picture from the U.S. military shows, Mach 1 can be quite visual.
This widely circulated new photo shows a Air Force F-22 Raptor aircraft participating in an exercise in the Gulf of Alaska June 22, 2009 as it executes a supersonic flyby over the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis.
The visual phenomenon, which sometimes but not always accompanies the breaking of the sound barrier, has also been seen with nuclear blasts and just after space shuttles launches, too. A vapor cone was photographed as the Apollo 11 moon-landing mission rocketed skyward in 1969.
The phenomenon is not well studied. Scientists refer to it as a vapor cone, shock collar, or shock egg, and it's thought to be created by what's called a Prandtl-Glauert singularity.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I have always wondered what I look like.
Is that aircraft blocking (backlit by) the sun?
I don't think so but a professional photographer would give you a more authoritative answer than my guess.
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I’d say, from the shadowing on the vapor and a little glint of light on the left side of the jet, that the sun is out of the frame to the left of the jet.
That vapor cone happens when certain conditions of temperature and pressure are met, and it may or may not be anywhere near the mach barrier.
It’s cool... but it doesn’t mean a plane was necessarily supersonic.
Apollo 11 launch
This is not exclusively a trans-sonic thing; high humidity and high-g maneuvers can produce the same effect on subsonic aircraft. It's especially noticeable on float planes, which are always in a humid environment - the effect streams from each propellor tip on takeoff, blending with the plane's airstream. Another example of this is the video of the Doolittle Raiders throttling-up their B-25s on that carrier deck.
Pre-supersonic.
Great pictures! Thanks for sharing.
chuckle...
Which explains (to me) why the majority of the photos in the article are of F/A-18s and other USN aircraft. Nothing like a CVN (Carrier) as a photographer's platform where the conditions are optimal for that visually impressive vapor cone.
Liar, liar pants on fire! I smell a photoshopped copter in the mix!
Actually helicopters go supersonic all the time.
The tips of their rotor blades routinely go supersonic, it’s what gives the Helicopter that wop wop wop sound at speed.
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