Schlieren photograph of T-38 shock waves at Mach 1.1, 13,000 feet

This is Dr. Leonard Weinstein's Schlieren photograph of a T-38 at Mach 1.1, altitude 13,700 feet, taken at NASA Wallops in 1993. Schlieren photography (from the German word for "streaks") allows the visualization of density changes, and therefore shock waves, in fluid flow. Schlieren techniques have been used for decades in laboratory wind tunnels to visualize supersonic flow about model aircraft, but not full scale aircraft until recently. Dr. Leonard Weinstein of NASA Langley Research Center developed the first Schlieren camera, which he calls SAF (Schlieren for Aircraft in Flight), that can photograph the shock waves of a full sized aircraft in flight. He successfully took a picture which clearly shows the shock waves about a T-38 aircraft on December 13, 1993 at Wallops Island, MD. The camera was then brought to the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center because of the high number of supersonic flights there.

Image Credit : NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (NASA-DFRC) [source]

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