Now I’ve heard of contrails, those white streaks of cloud produced by a plane flying past at high altitude, but rainbow contrails are new to me. All I can say is that they are rather pretty.

Contrails are produced when the water vapour from the exhaust of jet engines condenses and freezes, forming the visible trails. Their formation depends on the environmental conditions at the time.

Rainbow Contrails Video

Michael Marston is a Brisbane based photographer, who is on Facebook as ePixel Aerospace. He has revealed some excellent pictures and video of actual rainbow contrails.

While you might think that the photos have been enhanced or filtered in some way, they have not. The photographer prefers to show real images, which are certainly more exciting to me. Below is a video he posted, which shows that things are in fact real.

This shows a Qatar Airways Boeing 777-200LR flying QR921 from Auckland to Doha. It is taken while the aircraft was flying at just over 30,000 feet back in June 2019.

In a fun coincidence, I have flown in business class on that very aircraft, registered A7-BBG, on that very route from Auckland to Doha. While that was fun, I would have been even more excited if I knew I had some rainbow contrails behind me!

Overall Thoughts

It’s always enjoyable seeing something that is truly surprising and that reminds us of how beautiful the world can be. There are more pictures available on the photographer’s Instagram account as well.

There is an interview with the photographer at Traveller, which you may also want to read. Either way, I’m dying to see what the tin foil hat wearing “chemtrail” people think of all of this!

Have you ever seen anything like this before? What did you think of the pictures and video? Thanks for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image by Michael Marston/ePixel Aerospace.