Dark Lines in the Sky over Liverpool 15/06/2015. Photo © Planet Preternatural
A few days ago I spotted some unusual dark lines criss-crossing the sky over my home town in Liverpool. Since I have never personally seen this particular phenomenon before, I took a few pictures.
I say, never personally seen, which is correct, but I have seen plenty of examples of this very phenomenon on numerous websites around the World. On a few of those sites, it is stated that these dark lines are part of a sinister government plot to either modify the weather or reduce the human population – AKA the conspiracy theory of ‘Chemtrails’. This brief article is not a discussion about whether or not there is any truth to Chemtrails. It is about unpicking elements of the known and removing them from the mystery altogether.
Dark Lines
When sufficiently high in the sky, the light from the Sun or the full Moon can cause shadows from aircraft trails to be cast upon low level thin cloud cover, which can then be seen by observers on the ground as dark lines that appear to be ‘painted’ onto the clouds. Sometimes shadow aircraft can also be seen scurrying across low-level cloud banks, which on rare occasions have been reported as UFOs.
On some occasions it will appear that a dark line is casting itself onto a clear blue sky, like in this photo here:
Taken by Mike Weight from Honeymoon Island State Park, Florida, August 2013
but on closer inspection you will be able to see low-level haze in the atmosphere that is fairly translucent but still coherent enough to cast a shadow upon. Which brings us to…
Black Beams
High altitude jet following a ‘black beam’ in the sky, London 03/06/2013. Photo © Planet preternatural
On rare occasions, when a series of factors coincide, the shadows are cast in front of the aircraft which, when observed from the ground, makes it seem like the aircraft is following a ‘black beam’ that has mysteriously been projected across the sky. Chemtrail conspiracy theorists claim that this ‘Black Beam’ is some kind of covert particle weapon technology and is conclusive proof that something sinister is going on. But what is actually being seen is something completely natural that has a very simple explanation.
Sometimes factors combine to project aircraft trail shadows in front of the path of the aircraft. Diagram © Planet Preternatural.
When the sun is low in the sky, the trail from a high altitude aircraft flying away from the sun will cast a shadow in its direction of travel. An observer who is in the right place on the ground will see a dark line seemingly projected out in front of the path of the aircraft. Although the sky appears to be cloud free, low-level haze is present allowing the shadow to be visible. As the aircraft flies, the trail it leaves in the sky appears to replace the black line exactly, but in reality the aircraft is much higher than the black line shadow. The illusion that the black line and the aircraft trail are at the same height is caused by the position on the ground the observer is in relation to the trail and also the translucence of the haze. Because the aircraft trail is much denser and reflective than the flimsy haze (and remembering that a shadow is only as solid as the surface it is cast upon), the brighter trail effectively makes the shadow ‘disappear’ as it travels across the sky.
And that, in a nutshell, is the truth behind ‘Black Beams’ and ‘Dark Lines’ in the sky. So whatever the truth is about ‘Chemtrails’, at least we can now safely say that some of the ‘weird effects’ that are associated with them are not as sinister as first thought.
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