Photographers capture planes flying in front of full moon

‘It it was pure luck as I was just getting the moon at twilight’

A plane passes in front of the moon on its approach to London Heathrow airport (Toby Melville/Reuters)

Almost 20,000 planes are in the sky at any given time, so seeing an aircraft fly overhead usually isn’t anything to shout about.

Not so with these planes, which were captured flying in front of the moon.

In the UK, Toby Melville captured an aircraft on its final approach into London Heathrow airport, with the full moon shining in the background.

Then on the other side of the world, a New Zealand-based photographer captured a passenger plane coming in to land at Wellington airport, backlit by the moon.

Aviation snapper Tim Gorman captured Air New Zealand flight NZ5823 as it was flying from Hamilton, on the North Island, further south to capital Wellington.

In the image, the ATR 72-600 twin-engine plane is seen flying in front of a full moon.

Mr Gorman told Newshub that he was “over the moon” with the shot.

“It it was pure luck as I was just getting the moon at twilight and just happen to by chance have the camera on the moon and clicking away as the aircraft went past," he said.

“It’s a very hard shot to ever get and is just something you get at the right place at the right time.”

Earlier this week, a photographer captured a rainbow-coloured vapour trail streaming from a Qatar Airways aircraft flying 30,000ft above Brisbane.

The Boeing 777 jet was flying from its home base of Doha, Qatar, to Auckland in New Zealand when its contrails caught the late winter light.

Photographer Michael Marston captured the rainbow trail for his site ePixel Aerospace. He called the sight “one of the most spectacular rainbow contrails” he had ever seen.

The trail is an aerodynamic contrail – short for condensation trail – as opposed to the more common jet contrails that are formed of exhaust fumes.