What the photographer is saying now on the link.
Posted by gerard isaacson on January 31, 2009
To help shed light on this picture, a storm had just cleared the area, I shot this around the same time USAirways #1549 dropped into the Hudson. This 747 cleared the view of the sky in my back yard like the space schuttle. The halo appeared once very faintly which drew my attention, so I raised the camera in case I saw it again, the first halo last like 1/2 a second, then I started to see it again so I depressed the shutter once...just one shot...that's what I got...the halo or shockwave moved with the plane...it did not pass through a vortex donut so to speak...it was 11 degrees on the ground so I think possibly this is light playing off a layer of ice crystals where the air is compressing by the bow wave. I've just never seen this before. I wonder if the crew were able to see it?..
High magnification would lead me to believe it's photoshopped as you can see where the pen to draw the "Condensation" has stopped and started, for one thing. Other anomalies can be noted as well, lack of symmetry and continuity. Edited to add: Bollox to veracity, it just ain't how the Prandtl–Glauert singularity works (which is what the photographer is trying to say is going on).
Last edited by Brian Abraham; 1st February 2009 at 20:46.