Jumbo at 36000 feet

Spotted this yesterday in a perfect Yorkshire sky.
It was the only aircraft around and appeared to have three contrails which suggests three engine.
It is actually a B747 jumbo.(Best guess)
Now. I reckon thats a least 36000feet high, maybe higher.
So taking into account the angle from my location I reckon that aircraft is at least 10 to 15 miles away.
It just goes to show the quality of compact digitals these days.
Its a credit to the camera that the aircraft can to identified.
And also the quality of the air yesterday morning
This was I believe at 10x optical and I have cropped quite a lot in photobucket.
robert

 

A tiny little dot on the horizon woo...
robert

 

There are 4 contrails there.... look just behind the engines, you can see that engine 1 and 2 are producing a contrail each, but due to the angle they appear to merge almost immediately.
I'm not sure it's in excess of 30,000 feet, most B747s don't get to cruising height until outside UK airspace on the way to continental America or the far East. (It normally takes about 30-45 minutes to reach cruising altitude by which time they will have vectored out over the Atlantic or Europe). It's probably no more than 20,000 and still climbing, but I still agree it's an impressive capture.
Well done. :thumb:

 

Canucks.
You are correct, but this aircraft was heading south so could be on let down for one of the southern airports, some 200 plus further miles.
The outcome is the same but, we must remember that I believe contrails usually kick in at about 30,000feet, depending on conditions,
(Please tell me if I am incorrect on this issue) so that would put the aircraft at 30K+
robert

 

Caps exhaust vapour trails or contrails usually occur above 8000 metres (26,000 feet). where the temperature is below -40c

 

Being ex RAF you would think I would know that:(
But whats a few thousand feet between friends
robert