Has anyone else ever observed from a commercial jet?  I had an overnight flight a few months ago and took advantage of it.  I had to cover my head and the entire window with a coat to get rid of "local light pollution", but the results were stunning. 

Cassiopeia and her mythological buddies dominated my view.  The various clusters in the area were fantastically bright.  I recall seeing colors brighter than I've ever seen before.  M31 was terribly obvious, though no real detail could be made out.

Granted, the window blurred the view considerably.  I don't know if even low-magnification binoculars would have worked.  It was an uncomfortable position, and I probably seemed very strange to any other passengers awake at the time.  I think I only got fifteen minutes of really good viewing.

My memory has had a while to improve the memory, but I remember it as the most impressive astronomical vista I've ever seen, and I've observed from some very dark sites.  Only one way to check my memory: try it again :D

(If the windows in Boeing's new jet are as big as they claim, I'd like to try that.)

hey your from detroit right??, im moving to troy MI, and i might get a 8'' dob. were would be a good place to star gaze around my area>??

jkade wrote:

Has anyone else ever observed from a commercial jet?

Yeah, always when it is possible but for the obvious reason you can't really do any serious observing from there. Aurora borealis... meteors...

jkade wrote:

Granted, the window blurred the view considerably.

Just like observing inside your house. Might be warm and cozy but better views from outside. Airplanes usually have quite thick windows for a good reason.

/Jake

I've done it on a few occasions.

Dave Mitsky 

 

This is not the same experience as you had flying above the clouds, but it's as near as I can come, and perhaps as fascinating and maybe more beautiful if that's possible; and depending on your geographical location more accessible.

In late January of 1961 I was in the mountains of Southern California.  To the south across the ridge line was the Pacific Ocean and to the north and east was the desert.  We were in between two ridge lines with those features on either side of us. We were involved in a night field exercise, as U.S. Marines, and were there for the entire night. 

After the night firing was over we were pretty much just enjoying doing nothing until we got orders, and so had a chance to enjoy the night sky.  Another factor probably is that light pollution from San Diego to the southeast and L.A. to the northwest hadn't then grown to the problem it is today.  But our location, Camp Pendleton, is on a section of the Pacific coast that runs so that the Pacific Ocean lay to the south west.

What may have made this a special night was the cold air of winter, being in January, and of course the lateness of the hour.  But what I saw was to me beautiful beyond belief.  It must have compared with what you saw from above the clouds. All the constellations were far more brilliant than I'd ever seen before.  But the warnings we'd had to watch out for scorpions was symbolically perfect because the constellation that was most commanding was Scorpio, even though it wasn't too long before dawn. Antares glowed red as if on fire. 

There was another effect I've never seen or  heard of before, and perhaps it was an isolated event;  but after midnight when looking up at the skies zenith, if you didn't look too directly, there was a constant flux of meteors moving about, just within the range of visibility.  It has always made me wonder if  it's not true that we are constantly being bombarded by small meteors just within the range of our eyesight.  It was too late in the month for it to have been the Quadrantids shower which should be about the 4^th of Jan.

When I hear that Eagle's song "Peaceful Easy Feeling", and the part about "I want to sleep with you in the desert tonight" I can't help think but what a wonderful thing that would be to do again.  But the sleeping part, I would let go by.  It was indeed a night to remember!

Could anyone tell me what planets were prominent in the sky that night about the 3^rd week in January 1961?

Ive observed from the sunroof being opened up at night in my dads saturn.

I'm an airline pilot and observe almost exclusively from above the clouds. 

It's not the best observatory though: we've always got the glare of the instruments in the windows (we can switch off the big lights, but for obvious reasons, not the small important ones).  Also there's quite a lot of movement due to turbulence or the tiny corrections the airplane continuously makes.

As a passenger you would also have the constant flickering of the strobe lights (white, on the wingtips) and to a lesser extend the beacon (red, on top of the fuselage).  And of course you only see one side of the sky.

It's interesting though how I keep amazing other pilots when I invite them to have a look outside.  Most are amazed by the number of "shooting stars" we can count or by the fact that you can see lots of satellites orbiting earth.  Flight attendants that visit the cockpit are mostly interested in seeing their "starsign".  Amazing how sometimes they believe in astrology but don't have the slightest clue where to look or what to look for to find their "sign" (but probably one rules out the other).  Lots of people also don't know you can see planets, except for maybe Venus. 

I've taken my binoculars a few times, but either I move too much or the airplane does - or most prabably both - to have a stable look at anything.

The biggest advantage is the huge geographical mobility.  One night you can see the southern hemisphere, the other night the northern.  Or the Aurora borealis when we fly over the north pole.  This is by all accounts the most captivating flight: New York - Hong Kong over the north pole (or at least up to 88.5 degrees north).  You leave New York at noon, it gets dark as you fly north depending on the season, maybe see the aurora borealis, and as you've flipped the map the sun rises in the southwest.  By the time we arrive in Hong Kong, it's dark again and we're 12 hours ahead in time. 

Not really an astronomy topic, but also quite fantastic to observe as a pilot is Saint Elmo's fire, and the blueish glow that lies ahead of the airplane as we fly through high clouds sometimes.

Now I've always had a question about that.  We notice often a quite distinct smell while that happens.  Once another pilot told me it was ozone.  Maybe one of you bright guys can answer this for me.  How is it that I notice a distinct sharp smell when we fly through "statically charged" clouds, what is it and how does it form?  And how is it "preserved" as it enters the airplane engines and is compressed, heated up to some 200 degrees Celsius and then cooled to be used by the airconditioning?  Is it any dangerous or poisonous?  It usually comes together with some additional noise of friction as the cloud gets thicker.

Lots of clear skies guys and girls!  (not that i need them...)

 

I have never seen anything during night flying, but on a mid morning flight one time the caption came on line and pointed out to all that if we looked out window on the left we would see a full circle rainbow which was pretty neat.

Al

 

  Back in January of this year, I was on a short flight from Adelaide , back home to Melbourne.  I was on the starboard side of the plane, with a window seat, and my flight took off just around sunset.

 Once we were up, I thought I would see if I could spot Venus, but instead, there was a very bright light in the west, low on the horizon, and sitting in the orange glow of the sunset. There was a a faintish tail to it, but  initially, staring at it blankly, I had thought it was another aircraft.. of course, it stayed in its position and I soon realised that it was 'that comet' that got a tiny, brief, 2 line mention in the newspaper earlier that week..(I had had no access to internet or further news that whole week, whilst visiting the in laws )

  Yep - Comet McNaught.  The flight is only about an hour or less, but I craned my neck, staring at the comet as it slipped slowly toward and then below the horizon, and even then, the tail still persisted above the horizon in the twilight.

 Once home, we were clouded out for the next few nights - the first clear evening, the comet was higher in the darker sky, and the visible tail had grown from about 2 degrees, to about 40 + degrees

 A great view from home, but catching an unexpected  glimpse of it on that flight was fantastic !

The closes I have ever come to this experience is when I was flying on Microsoft's Fight Simulator 2004 using a modification that put stars in their real positions.

Well, I observed from above the clouds a few weeks ago at the Mauna Kea Visitor Information station on the Big Island, Hawaii. We took a 4 wheel drive to the summit, and checked out the sunset there at the professional observatories, and then came back down to a cool star party there at the Visitor Information station. It was the most amazing sky I've ever seen. There were so many stars it was hard to pick out familiar constellations. I've only been getting into Amateur Astronomy the last six months or so, and kind of fell into this opportunity as we'd planned a Hawaiian vacation anyway, and I really wished I'd been into it longer so I could appreciate it even more. If anyone ever has a chance to go to Hawaii, I'd highly recommend doing that. I don't know if I can post a link here as I'm new, but you can find info easily by googling " mauna kea visitor information station"