Message-ID: <21919301.1075860850427.JavaMail.evans@thyme> Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 12:30:40 -0700 (PDT) From: peggy_brasch@fmc.com To: kevin.hyatt@enron.com Subject: GREAT picture!! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-From: "BRASCH, PEGGY" @ENRON X-To: Hyatt, Kevin X-cc: X-bcc: X-Folder: \Kevin_Hyatt_Mar2002\Hyatt, Kevin\Personal X-Origin: Hyatt-K X-FileName: khyatt (Non-Privileged).pst My friend Sandi sent me this. I thought you might like it, too. GREAT picture!! > Please read all this first before opening up the picture. This is pretty > cool! Be sure to read the explanation below before looking at the attached > picture. You can't really appreciate the picture without knowing what it is > exactly. This isn't a joke, so don't expect a punchline or strange/funny > picture. > Through the viewfinder of his camera, Ensign John Gay could see the fighter > plane drop from the sky heading toward the port side of the aircraft carrier > Constellation. At 1,000 feet, the pilot drops the F/A-18C Hornet to increase > his speed to 750 mph, vapor flickering off the curved surfaces of the plane. > In the precise moment a cloud in the shape of a farm-fresh egg forms around > the Hornet 200 yards from the carrier,its engines rippling the Pacific Ocean > just 75 feet below, Gay hears an explosion and snaps his camera shutter once. > "I clicked the same time I heard the boom, and I knew I had it", Gay said. > What he had was a technically meticulous depiction of the sound barrier being > broken July7,1999, somewhere on the Pacific between Hawaii and Japan. > Sports Illustrated, Brills Content, and Life ran the photo. The photo > recently took first prize in the science and technology division in the World > Press Photo 2000 contest, which drew more than 42,000 entries worldwide. > "All of a sudden, in the last few days,I've been getting calls from > everywhere about it again. It's kind of neat, " he said, in a telephone > interview from his station in Virginia Beach, VA. > A naval veteran of 12 years, Gay, 38, manages a crew of eight assigned to > take intelligence photographs from the high-tech belly of an F-14Tomcat,a > Joint Task Force Exercise as the Constellation made its way to Japan. > Gay selected his Nikon 90 S, one of the five 35 mm cameras he owns. He set > his > 80-300 mm zoom lens on 300 mm, set his shutter speed at 1/1000 of a second > with an aperture setting of F5.6. "I put it on full manual, focus and > exposure," Gay said. "I tell young photographers who are into automatic > everything, you aren't going to get that shot on auto. The plane is too > fast. The camera can't keep up." > At sea level a plane must exceed 741 mph to break the sound barrier, or the > speed at which sound travels. The change in pressure as the plane outruns > all of the pressure and sound waves in front of it is heard on the ground as > an explosion or sonic boom. The pressure change condenses the water in the > air as the jet passes these waves. Altitude, wind speed,humidity, the shape > and trajectory of the plane - all of these affect the breaking of this > barrier. The slightest drag or atmospheric pull on the plane shatters the > vapor oval like fireworks as the plane passes through,he said everything on > July 7 was perfect. "You see this vapor flicker around the plane that gets > bigger and bigger. You get this loud boom, and it's instantaneous. The > vapor cloud is there, and then it's not there. > It's the coolest thing you have ever seen." > Now open the picture. - CLOUD.jpg