Scientists in California are taking photos of shockwaves from supersonic airplanes via Schileren Imagery - a German photography technique, according to NASA.
"Air-to-air schlieren is an important flight-test technique for locating and characterizing, with high spatial resolution, shock waves emanating from supersonic vehicles," said Dan Banks, Armstrong's principal investigator on the project. "It allows us to see the shock wave geometry in the real atmosphere as the target aircraft flies through temperature and humidity gradients that cannot be duplicated in wind tunnels."
J.T. Heineck, Principal investigator at NASA Ames, noted that the development process was tough, but well worth it in the end.
"After much planning and a little luck we were able to acquire in-flight images and process the data, achieving results the first time out," he said in a statement .
The main researcher initially came up with the idea for the project, NASA reported.
Heineck has 64 written works, according to Research Gate.
