[muawiyah]

PI R SQUARED is pretty fundamental. You don't trust it, you're in the wrong universe! Then there's aperture width ~ easy to check. They have "tables" for those. What wasn't known is the altitude ~ he never said ~ so I drew on two other computations ~ one at 1500 ft and one at 2500 ft. Pretty obvious the guys who did the news story assumed sea level, which is where they got their 35 miles for their estimate of how far offshore it was.

The atmospheric lensing effect is strongly at work in this particular situation, but if you discount it you'll find that contrail goes way, way, way out to sea, over the horizon and darned near to Hawaii.

That's because it's a jet plane with three engines that produce a single contrail.

[justa-hairyape]

PI R SQUARED is pretty fundamental. You don't trust it, you're in the wrong universe!

Do not trust your observational skills. Post the image you used to make the calculations and I will point out your mistake.