
Northern Lights as seen from inside a U2 spy plane - nerdy
https://theaviationist.com/2018/03/07/this-is-what-the-northern-lights-look-like-from-inside-a-u-2-dragon-lady-spyplane/
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everdev
Beautiful shots.

Surprised that these photos were allowed to be released from a recent military
mission in a spy plane.

It's hard to glean much insight into what the mission might have been, but I
thought the military had to approve the release of content through a lengthy
declassification process.

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dullgiulio
I guess it works as a PR stunt for the armed forces.

I wonder where U2 are deployed today. I thought they were an easy target for
ground missiles...

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jeff_vader
U2 was used in Afghanistan. So nowadays it's probably flying over Syria.

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secfirstmd
Bono is everywhere these days!

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nerdy
It must be a surreal, spiritual experience to be there all alone at 70,000
feet.

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EdwardCoffin
I read something about this in a quite unexpected place: H is for Hawk by
Helen Macdonald:

> A few years ago I met a retired U2 pilot ... as I talked with this man what
> impressed me the most weren't his deadpan tales of high adventure, the
> 'incidents' with Russian MiGs and so on, but his battle against boredom. The
> nine-hour solo missions. The twelve-hour solo missions. 'Wasn't that
> horrendous?', I asked. 'It could get a little lonely up there,' he replied.
> But there was something about how he said it that made it sound a state
> still longed-for. And then he said something else. 'I used to read,' he
> said, unexpectedly, and with that his face changed, and his voice too: his
> deadpan Yeager drawl slipped, was replaced with a shy, childlike enthusiasm.
> 'The Once and Future King. By T.H.White,' he said. 'Have you heard of him?
> He's an English writer. It's a great book. I used to take that up, read it
> on the way out and on the way back.' [pp31-2]

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DoingIsLearning
At what altitude is the storm, that generates these lights?

Intuitively I would have thought that, if they are on the edge of the
atmosphere, the lights would be lower than the plane, no?

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kryptiskt
The lights come from charged particles (from the solar wind) being accelerated
in the Earth's magnetic field, so they are not an atmospheric phenomenon.

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xioxox
I wonder whether they got a big dose of radiation from being so high with all
those high energy particles.

