Weird sighting in the sky

[alltheway]

Today was a sunny warm day, as usual I was outside taking photo's of airplanes passing by, suddenly I saw a 747 with contrails, but also noticed some weird dark trail ahead the airplane. I wonder if someone recognices this, might be a reflection of the contrails or so, I really don't know and it was only this airplane, Also saw it with my naked eyes!!!

[joeyb747]

Very odd...I have never seen that before...

The other thing I noticed it that there is only three contrails...not four. Possible this was an MD-11 of similar and not a B747? Sure looks like a B747 in the center pic thou...

[alltheway]

These photo's are one and the same airplane, not photo touch-up applied, so all original.

[Biff]

This is a very cool effect that appears most often when the sun is low in the sky.  The contrail's shadow appears ahead of the plane.  When all the trigonometry lines up, it appears that the plane flying along its own shadow.

You can find a video or two of this on youtube.  Just ignore the "chemtrail" nuttery.  

[atcman23]

Very odd...I have never seen that before...

The other thing I noticed it that there is only three contrails...not four. Possible this was an MD-11 of similar and not a B747? Sure looks like a B747 in the center pic thou...

Looks like a 3 engine aircraft... probably an MD-11... the middle contrail lines up perfectly with (what you cam make of) the fuselage.  Pretty cool shadow effect though!

[joeyb747]

Very odd...I have never seen that before...

The other thing I noticed it that there is only three contrails...not four. Possible this was an MD-11 of similar and not a B747? Sure looks like a B747 in the center pic thou...

Looks like a 3 engine aircraft... probably an MD-11... the middle contrail lines up perfectly with (what you cam make of) the fuselage.  Pretty cool shadow effect though!

Either that...or this 747 is flying on three engines!   Just kidding...most likely an MD-11 or DC-10, FedEx still runs a strong fleet of DC-10s. Unfortunately, it's probably not an L-1011...those are all but gone now...
Miss those Tristars.

[alltheway]

Well the 3 contrails must be my position on the ground, because these images I tried to enhance show 2 engines on the right wing, with the #3 contrail covering up the #4 trail  

Found this video at youtube:

[atcman23]

Wow good catch... it's now clear that this is a 4 engine aircraft.

[H25PIC]

You may have seen this, or something related to it.

http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?contentBlockId=41e2d9de-4756-4810-9b82-6a5550dfa9a5

"The 418th FLTS took precautionary measures to build up to the final test day. "On Monday we had JP-8 in three engines, and one engine had a blend of 50-50 biofuel and the JP-8," Holther said. "It's part of a safety build-up. "

Maybe a test bed engine operating on 50-50 blend, thus no contrail from this fuel?

Just a wild guess.

Or it all could be just an illusion from the perspective you saw it.

BTW, if you fly through a shadow of a contrail, it appears as a "black beam" from overhead penetrating the atmosphere.

[alltheway]

Must be form my point of view I think.

But anyway I had never seen a dark trail shadow ahead before! I find it still amazing!!!