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About 14 years ago I was looking forward to taking the telescope out at night - the forecast looked really good. But in the late afternoon, my perfect sky got mucked up with loads of criss-crossing contrails and was absolutely useless by the time astronomical twilight set in.
I got online and did some research. One site explained that the problem contrails form when heat from a plane's exhaust interacts with cold upper atmosphere ice crystals. It vaporizes them, and creates long 'strips' of clouds that spread out and eventually blend together, causing the whole sky to become overcast. Makes perfect sense.
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