This Stunning Photo Captured Thunderbird Opposing Solo Generating Shock Wave Light Distortion
November 21, 2019 David Cenciotti Military Aviation 0 Comments
The visible distortion around the belly of the aircraft (left side of the photo) is caused by the shock waves that distort light as if it was entering a new medium.
As we already explained in the past, an aircraft maneuvering at high-speed through the air creates a pressure gradient that generates shock waves at speed much lower than the speed of sound: shock waves are generated by the interaction of two bodies of gas at different pressure, with a shock wave propagating into the lower pressure gas and an expansion wave propagating into the higher pressure gas.
Unlike heat from the aircraft exhaust, that tends to “blur†the area/background around the engine, shock waves distort the light in straight lines: you will probably remember the photo we published last year of an F-35 flying through the famous Jedi Transition, aka “Star Wars Canyonâ€, with visible light distortion at the belly of the aircraft. That peculiar straight distortion was caused by the shock waves around the aircraft.
https://theaviationist.com/2019/11/21/this-stunning-photo-captured-thunderbird-opposing-solo-generating-shock-wave-light-distortion/
