Looking remarkably like a photograph taken from low earth orbit

the image above was taken from the flight-deck of an Airbus A380.

The aircraft had climbed to 43,000 feet only a short time before to avoid storm clouds over Darwin.

The light of the full moon illuminates the landscape below,

while the Southern Cross and Carina are seen at the top centre of the image.

A surprising fact is the A380 has enough power to acheive earth orbit provided its jet engines could produce

the same thrust in the thin air at altitude, as they do in dense air at sea-level.

Trying to acheive orbit would still be a bad idea....

The airframe and cabin pressurisation systems

are not designed for hypersonic flight and the vacuum of space.

The view from well above the tropopause however is sublime.

Image and text copyright Peter J Ward 2017, 2020

Can you see all 26 grey scales above?