Flight from Moscow to Tokyo

[bakubo]

Recently while flying from Moscow to Tokyo on Aeroflot I took some photos out the window at night with my Canon G16 and it's 28-140mm (expressed in FF terms) f1.8-2.8 lens using raw. I had considered using my Olympus E-M10 or E-M5, but the only lens I had that would cover a reasonable range was the 14-150mm f4-5.6 (28-300mm in FF terms) so I figured I wouldn't really gain anything since I would be shooting at slower apertures with it and therefore higher ISO settings. According to dxomark the G16 noise and dynamic range are about 1.5 stops worse than the E-M5 and Sony A6000 (the E-M5 and A6000 are almost identical up to about ISO 6400). I shot photos over the full 28-140mm range. Anyway, the point of this post is to show a few and ask some questions.

http://www.bakubo.com/Galleries%202/Russia/index.html

This website purports to show the Aeroflot flight path over Siberia:

http://flights.traveleurope.com/route/f ... -tokyo.php

If that is correct I wouldn't expect to see ocean, but at night in the dim light it appeared that for quite some time we were passing over water with lots of sea ice. At least, that is what it appeared to be. Note that I spent lots of time in Lightroom working on all of the photos, because often I was shooting at ISO 1600 to 3200 at the widest aperture, the light was pretty dim (but with the northern horizon sometimes with some light). Graininess/noise, white balance, and shooting through a window (clean and new though) all made for rather difficult raw files to work with. I have several in the Russia album, but here are a couple of what appears to possibly be sea ice:





Later as it got even darker I started to see orange lights occasionally down there. Was this the sea and they were ships? Was this land and they were some sort of installations (maybe drilling for oil or something)? You can see one light under the wing on the far right in this photo:



What do you think?

[bakubo]

Here are a few lights with one being rather large:



Also, are those roads or are they paths through sea ice?

Some more zoomed into 140mm with a bit of cropping:

[aster]

Hi Bakubo;

Nice observation. The only water feature on that route appears to be Lake Baikal in Eastern Siberia. I believe Lake Baikal is frozen all throughout winter (but I could be wrong), and now that it's Summer in the Northern Hemisphere, what we see in these photos maybe patches of ice covering the lake water. The lake is longitudinal from south to north and is rather narrow from west to east, so it can only appear for a short time during your night flight and it must have been land for the rest of the flight for a while.
I believe those 'runway' likenesses are routes for the ships also. It's a big lake and economically important for Russia, so anything from oil carriers to small tourist ships/boats could be using these beacons of light to follow a certain secure route. Just my thoughts of course, I wouldn't know where your pilot wanted to head for during your particular flight.

By the way, usually, during such long flights as yours, the pilot usually takes time to inform the passengers by announcing which interesting or prominent land feature they are passing over at a particular time. Was anything announced over the speakers, perhaps?

Very interesting captures. Glad you just didn't drift off into a deep sleep. : )


Yildiz

[bakubo]

Yildiz, thanks for looking. Did you also see the others in the Russia album that show some more?

I don't see how it could have been a lake. I mentioned that we flew over this water for quite awhile, but I should have been more specific. It was probably an hour or even a little more. We were flying at about 12,000 meters altitude and probably going about 900 km/hour. Also, as far in the distance in all directions I could see in my north facing window I could see what appeared to be water and ice. Behind, in front, and looking straight out to the north.

No, the pilot didn't announce anything. As I said, it was night. The cabin lights were very dim, most people were sleeping (including my wife), and it was very quiet. No PA announcements.

I am not so sure that the website that shows the flight path is correct. Maybe we were flying much further north.

[aster]

Thanks for the clarification.

This will be a guessing game then. I think what you were seeing outside your window was the Kara Sea that opens to the Arctic Ocean, seeing that you also passed over many curving rivers and river deltas. The spherical shape of the Earth makes flight routes a little different than what may appear on paper. So, the pilot may have made a couple of choices:

1. The length of the route doesn't change much if the route arch around the planet is a little offset towards the North. (I just checked on a World Globe I have at home with a piece of rope. )
By opting for a more Nordic route, he avoids the harsh land conditions and in case of an emergency landing or a crash, increases the chance of survival and an accurate search.
2. Avoiding more busy air network routes, hence increasing the chances for auto-piloting on a monotonous and long flight.
3. And, the airlines usually try to make some flights interesting for the passenger to increase passenger comfort, therefore, instead of dark long night on the vast land, they chose the more interesting northeastern horizon that would eventually be crowned by the lights of the Sunrise, as your photos very well prove.

Consequently though, whatever the reason, this flight route proved at least interesting for one passenger, namely Henry. : ) Lucky!

Yildiz

[bakubo]

And I wonder about the lights. Maybe ships? Maybe oil drilling platforms? Maybe secret alien landing ports?

[aster]

And I wonder about the lights. Maybe ships? Maybe oil drilling platforms? Maybe secret alien landing ports?

Hi Bakubo;

I think you're very close to the truth there: the lights probably are of oil production platforms that belong to Russia, who invested in such platforms and oil pipelines in Kara Sea.
The straight lines that look like routes and make angular turns probably are caused by ice braking ships that escort the oil tankers.
Apparently some license agreements were signed for oil and gas research recently.
Sorry, no outer space aliens, just 'good old' human mentality as we know it ....

Yildiz

News articles:
Oil and Gas Transportation Systems in Russian Arctic
Gazprom Takes On Kara Sea

[ValeryD]

And I wonder about the lights. Maybe ships? Maybe oil drilling platforms? Maybe secret alien landing ports?

You just kill dream about discovery the alians...
Anyway, Henry, It's very interesting shots. thx

[bakubo]

We got back to Japan a couple of weeks ago after being away for 10 weeks and 1 day. We spent 2 weeks in the U.S. and then on to Europe for 8 weeks and 1 day. Spain, France, and Hungary.

Actually, we circumnavigated the world! We were in Japan and flew east to the States, then later flew east to Spain, then later flew east to France, then later flew east to Hungary, then later flew east to Russia (only a layover at the Moscow airport though), and then flew east back to Japan. It had not been planned, but that is how the wind blew us. Actually, in all my travels I had never done this before. It's funny because it didn't even hit me until we were on the plane heading to Moscow.

By the way, we flew on Aeroflot from Budapest all the way to Tokyo. First time to fly on them. I remember they had a bad reputation many years ago (bad service, rude workers, not so good quality Soviet planes, etc.) so wasn't sure what to expect. It was great though! Nice, new Airbus planes, very nice workers, etc. Liked it better than flying on the various U. S. airlines.

[Birma]

Great pictures Henry. I was ready to guess land and road until I saw Yildiz's last entry. Fascinating stuff. Thanks for sharing and making my lunch hour much more interesting!

[bakubo]

I think you're very close to the truth there: the lights probably are of oil production platforms that belong to Russia, who invested in such platforms and oil pipelines in Kara Sea.
The straight lines that look like routes and make angular turns probably are caused by ice braking ships that escort the oil tankers.
Apparently some license agreements were signed for oil and gas research recently.
Sorry, no outer space aliens, just 'good old' human mentality as we know it ....

Yildiz, that must be what those lights are. I had suspected that. Thanks for finding the info! Of course, they may be alien space ports masquerading as Russian oil production platforms!

News articles:
Oil and Gas Transportation Systems in Russian Arctic
Gazprom Takes On Kara Sea


[/quote]

Thanks, I will take a look at those articles.

[sury]

I wonder which forum enables you to learn photography, geography, topography, and for Henry's sake
alienography.

I love the fact that we are so multi-dimensional and not fixated on photos or equipment or techniques only.....

[aster]

.

Henry, I'm disappointed with myself that I disappointed you by mistaking alien ports for Russian economical alienation of world's oil resources for themselves only. I'll try not to damage the excitement and the dreams from childhood of encountering alien life on this planet, as a photographer or otherwise. There's still hope ... They like appearing over the seas, oceans and lakes for some reason and if you fly over remote and economically crucial locations once again, you may even find some tapping on the window glass next to your seat someday. : )
Half of it is believing and the other half is going for it.

Good luck! We'll be anticipating for future news on that particular course of events. : )

Yildiz

[sury]

Good one Yildiz.

If it is any consolation, Henry, I am an ex alien, at least according to US of A.
My green card before I became citizen clearly spelled it out as Resident Alien,
too bad those two words were not juxtaposed.



Sury

[bakubo]

Today I was fooling around with Topaz Denoise AI 3.5 and I remembered these photos taken at ISO 3200 with my Canon G16. I ran one of the raw files through it and it did a really good job on the very noisy file without removing detail.

IMG_2768-DeNoiseAI-raw.jpg (171.84 KiB) Viewed 70297 times