Contributor Mark Barton has for some time taken an interest in odd aircraft, and their contrails that he sees from his home near Reading, Berkshire.

It is worth remembering that the main Golf1 (or sometimes called Gold1) flightpath of out Heathrow goes over this area [I am on its northern edge at Blewbury in Oxfordshire –Ed], so Mark is used to seeing a great many aircraft pass fly over, and has quite an assortment of cameras to record these. Mark has often sent in reports of curious lights and dark triangles that he has seen while carrying out his observing. Another type of aircraft Mark describes are the ‘Fastmovers’, flying relatively high, and these are the ones that Mark observes leaving occasionally odd contrails, sometimes with the curious ‘loop’ effects. Of course odd contrails are very much of interest to those people looking for the exotic propulsions, such as Pulsed Wave Detonation (PWD), which has been long associated with Black projects such as the famed Aurora. Certainly odd ‘doughnuts on a rope’ contrails have been seen regularly over the States’.

It is worth noting that modern airliners can leave curious trails, I have noticed Boeing’s, and Airbuse’s etc leaving a normal contrail which then ‘loop back’ across themselves some distance behind the plane [A letter on this was published in UFO Magazine in 1996]. I suspect this sort of vortexing is down to the winglets that most modern aircraft how have, and must cause considerable worry of turbulence for any following aircraft. Recently I have noticed that Boeing have indicated they are developing methods to cut out all of this wingtip turbulence – presumably with some new design of wing fences.

Two of Mark’s photos are included here for your own analysis, and for you to reach your own conclusions. Figure 1 is one such contrail taken on an APS camera, while Figure 2 is the same trial with his 35mm SLR and 600mm lens.

The two other photos show another curiosity that can be observed if you spend enough time looking at the sky, and which Mark was able to record. These are two out of a series of four frames, and show a ‘halo effect’ at its best.

The cirrus clouds show that ice crystals high in the atmosphere ahead of an approaching front will have allowed odd optical phenomena to occur, but Mark’s photos do not show a common halo around the sun, but of something more akin to a ‘projected halo’. This is certainly unusual, and is not listed in meteorological books as amongst the common optical effects that are generated by the sun. Then again, according to experts, a triple halo is impossible – but I’ve certainly seen one!