During the SpaceX Hispasat Amazonas Nexus launch last Monday night I captured a close encounter with the Falcon 9 second stage and a distant aircraft. How close? The second stage actually passed behind the fuselage of the aircraft! This was captured from the Callaway Gardens Country Store overlook using an 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope .
The final segment of this clip is a magnified view which shows the second stage disappear as it passes behind the aircraft’s fuselage. The clip has been stabilized and enhanced to show the booster and second stage plumes.
The event took place 262 seconds after liftoff. At that time Flightclub.io estimated the second stage was 4.56° above the horizon on a heading of 120.7°. The range to the second stage was 574 miles.
ADSBExchange shows just one aircraft on that heading at that time – Southwest 1114, a Boeing 737 at FL360. The range to the aircraft was 80.3 miles.
To further verify Southwest 1114 was the aircraft I used the Pythagoreum Theorem to find its approximate altitude above the horizon – 4.85° is a pretty good match with the Flightclub.io estimate.
I’m not sure what the odds are of capturing something like this but I think it would be pretty high.