Today is a hard down day, long due after intense work around the aircraft and the two flights of yesterday. Things are definitely getting dirtier, and we started observing a decent amount of aerosols all along our flight trajectories.
I stitched this panorama of the McClellan airfield in between the two flights (2: 15 pm local time). On the extreme left, the tail of a 747, then that of a DC-8. Sometimes things just don’t fit right.
At right, the NASA King Air B-200 and the Department of Energy G-1 aircraft under careful maintenance of a member of the crew (“Wax on, wax off”). Note the sniffing tools (in gold color) close to the nose of the aircraft. Yummm…aerosols.
You can also see the presence of high cirrus clouds, not common in this season here in Sacramento. I’d much prefer not having them since they veil the Sun, which should instead shine unobstructed to guarantee a perfect interpretation of my polarimeter’s data (more about it in the next post).
-M.
Tags: NASA B-200, Sacramento